Classroom Civility Crumbles When War Toys Surface

The Children’s Center at Cal State Fullerton, daytime home to more than 200 infants, toddlers and preschoolers, puts into practice what assistant director Susan Hopkins calls a “non-sexist, non-aggressive, anti-bias curriculum.”

This means lots of good things, which I saw the other morning in Jan Sheffield’s class of 4- and 5-year-olds.

Boys and girls play with Legos and blocks, or pretend to be shopping for costume jewelry at the store. They draw pictures, fiddle with a doll house and mold clay. Smiles are easy, giggles abound.

For the most part, everybody is getting along. When they don’t, problems are talked, rather than shouted, out. No hitting is allowed. Apologies for misdeeds and hurt feelings are given and accepted. This is how many think childhood is supposed to be.

This is also what they call a controlled environment--until I came along and messed it all up .

I had been wondering about all these New Wave war toys: all the dire warnings about what they do to impressionable young minds. There are lots of studies and books being written about this today.

So the Children’s Center said that I was welcome to witness a little experiment, before and after, to see if war toys change the way that kids play, or alter the way that they think.

Jan assembles her class and explains that I am from the newspaper. Then she indulges in what we grown-ups call a white lie.

She says that I’ve brought along a bag of toys--they really belong to Susan, who uses them in professional workshops--and that I’d like to see what they think.

“OK, how many of you know what this is?” Jan asks as she pulls out a packaged G.I. Joe Dreadnok Cycle, a menacing replica of some Road Warriorish motorcycle.

“Oh, wow! “ the boys yell, almost in unison. “I have it! I have it at home!”

“You can use it to throw bombs!” Sean says. “I like it.” “Does it shoot fire?” Jan wants to know.

“Yeah!” comes the chorus of young male voices.

Clearly the GI Joe Dreadnok Cycle is one of the coolest things around. Nine little boys tell me as much with their expressions and their words. But the girls, all eight of them, are aghast.

If they got one for their birthdays, they say they would dump it in the trash.

By this time, of course, the kids are getting the idea. The code has crashed. Not only has the lady from the newspaper brought toys, but she has brought the really good bad stuff , the kind of thing that they see on TV. Until now, they’ve never seen this kind of thing here.

A My Little Pony, a pink plastic horse with a long mane and tail, is next out of the bag of tricks. The girls gush. They love it, they say. They’ve got scads of Little Ponies at home. The boys are grossing out. Some say that the first thing they’d do is whack off its hair.

A Thundercats doll, a grotesque looking creature armed to the hilt, is what Jan displays now.

The boys are thinking that things can’t get much better than this. Yeah! Yeah! They want one of those for their birthdays. They see Thundercats on TV!

Now everyone’s forgetting the rule about sitting down. It’s unenforceable, Jan sees. In a flash, the kids are on their knees, then their feet, crowding around for a better look.

“What would you do with this?” Jan asks.

“I’d go chchchch with the gun!” says Patrick, spraying his classmates with imaginary firepower.

Then out comes the G.I. Joe tissue paper, what in another reincarnation could be just an average pocket pack used for some peaceful pastime like wiping a runny nose. From the pictures on the front of the G.I. Joe tissues, however, it looks like you’re supposed to use them to soak up lots of blood.

The boys are enthralled. They’re elbowing each other, shouting out of turn. The girls are whining that the lady from the newspaper didn’t bring enough girl toys. Everybody’s forgetting the rules about staying put and doing what they’re told.

“How come we can’t keep these toys at school?” Patrick says.

Finally, the Masters of the Universe book appears. The boys hoot with glee. The girls, a little slower on the uptake, join in too. There’s He-man and Sheera and Battlecat and Orko and Skelatar!

“How many of you watch this on TV?” Jan asks. All but two of the children flail their arms in the air.

Then Jan flips through the pages of the book.

“Oh, they’re fighting!” says one of the young voices, indistinguishable from the others competing to be heard. “Yeah! Go get ‘em.”

Jesse and Andrew, by now, are play fighting themselves. Another little boy is in tears. The girls are banding together, off to the side. Things are close to out of control.

“Why do you like these toys?” I ask.

Eager preschoolers nearly stampede in the rush to tell me why, why, why.

“I like it because He-man fights the bad guy and punches his ears out!” Sean says.

“I like it cause it has bombs and lots of people and fire coming out and things blow up!” Jesse shouts.

Then all the kids show and tell what the bad guys look like. Fingers go in mouths, push up noses, contort eyes. One little girl says bad guys have dreadlocks. A boy says they are big and ugly.

He-man, well, you can tell that he’s good. He’s tall and blond and handsome. That, they suggest, is what being good is all about.

So you draw your own conclusions. I already have mine.

National sales of war toys top $1 billion a year, up 200% over the past 10 years, and the average American child watches about four hours of action-packed cartoons, a veritable blitzkrieg of automated violence, every day.

Kids go crazy for the stuff. Except then they start acting that way too. Kill him, zap her; burn, slash and bomb.

Sure, I know, children have always played war. It’s natural and it’s fun.

But there’s a meaner, more technologically hip edge to it all today, one that I didn’t notice growing up with Bugs Bunny and that bumbling hunter, Elmer Fudd.

As I’m leaving the Children’s Center, Jan, Susan and I start talking about what we’ve observed: rising aggression levels and lots of “them vs. us.”

They’ve never seen these kids act quite like this before.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.