Two weeks later I would estimate only 50% of my middle school students could relate what the program was about in general; less than 1/3 could describe specifics. Their world is the world of right here, right now.

I’ve been pretty happy with the level of respect I can get my kids to exhibit towards each other in the classroom. My challenge to to extend that influence, to get them to continue it once they step out through my door. I’m not going so far as to make them internalize it – that’s just something that comes with repeated practice.

I could probably rant for days about “motivational” school assemblies. It seems to mostly be a way to funnel our valuable educational dollars away from the schools and towards people that may have good intentions, but too little experience hands on with kids, and none in actually getting them to do more than sit down and watch a flashy show.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

I think this is why people find it easy to be cruel.

Unless, of course, they are teenagers oblivious to beings other than themselves (and hence the meat tearing).