I Am Not Hamlet

"...[K]eep in mind that a human being is not made for the processing of data, but for wisdom; not for the utilitarian satisfaction of appetite, but for love; not for the domination of nature, but for participation in it; not for the autonomy of an isolated self, but for communion." --Anthony Esolen,  Foreword to Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott.

Somehow I had a decent discussion with some of my 7th graders yesterday.  We had been covering the birth of Buddhism and discussing the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, when I brought up the concept of the purpose of morality.  For an example, we briefly turned to the Ten Commandments...specifically the command to refrain from stealing.  I asked students to imagine what the world would be like if they knew that nothing they had would ever be stolen.  I was surprised, though I shouldn't have been, by the limited vision they possessed.  The majority opinion was that the world would be boring.  Somehow, the idea that knowing your property would never be unjustly taken from you only conjures thoughts of boredom.  Mistakes and poor choices are the only way we can learn one student offered.  I shouldn't be too hard on them, I asked this question at the beginning of my teaching years and received nearly the same answer from high school students....

I've been ruminating off and on for the last couple of years about how we (as a society) raise our children. It seems, given our economic and lifestyle circumstances, we foist our children off on church and state to raise them. How many hours do most children spend in school each week? Who determined this amount? Is it arbitrary? If you send your children to Sunday school have you spent any time in the room or with the program? What exactly are they teaching them? Have you worked through it with your children at home? I find myself guilty of my own accusation at times. But then again. . . I am aware of the this trade-off of kids for money or time or leisure (not in the Pieperian sense ). Why do our children spend so much time away from us? We can blame the industrial revolution for its mixed blessing or variegated curse, but really we ought to blame ourselves. Why do we think others can raise our children better than we? Why do we think others can teach our children be...