individualism
I've begun the process of converting to vegetarianism. I've been buying non-meat meats and lots more veggies. I'm discovering ways to flavor and season these new foods. Slowly, I'll eat less real meat.
Looking into 12 and 13-year-old eyes is strange. They look to you for so much reflection. They expect adults to be as infinitely creative and communicative as they are, and I feel like I'm letting them down for ever being tired. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put one adult in a room in charge of 30 kids deserves a swift knee to the stomach. I'm drained, and it's only been two months.
Our youth don't find very many things interesting. Themselves. iPods. YouTube. MySpace. It got me thinking about our culture. Advertising, I suppose. How "America's business is business." I was talking about it with my Vice Principal today after school. Parents buy their kids things instead of having conversations with them, and then we're all left feeling lonely and unfulfilled.
I'm joining the gym near Target. It's starting to get brighter earlier, which is helping, but I'm looking to be healthy spiritually AND physically.
I'm working through Kozol's The Shame of the Nation, and his style is hard to penetrate. I'm enjoying it nonetheless. Books are really exciting, and I wish I was a faster reader. One of the questions he posed that I thought was interesting was how or where it begins that children start to distinguish what "haves" and "have nots" LOOK like. He was noticing that even at a young age, minority students in poor neighborhoods looked at him and asked why they didn't have the things HE had (as a white person, presumably). I think it ultimately comes down to a culture war.
Too, he made the argument that rich kids shouldn't be given preference to the best preschools because the assumption is that the parents of such children were highly educated themselves and can nurture their kids as well at home. My response was that they're gonna wanna get paid.
It's a destructive character trait that people don't want to do anything or put in any work for anything for "free." The lack of commitment to an idea, the lack of interest in supporting anything in its budding stages is interesting. It's a cultural (anti)value. It defines our very problem of killing creativity. We need to ask ourselves what behavior kills creativity and ask ourselves whether we think creativity is worth putting energy into. Do we want to be ants or do we want to be part of something that expresses our own infinite creativity? No, we're not always going to create something that is different from everything else, but seeing and constantly surrounding yourself with ideas, possibilities, things that were tried and succeeded, things that were tried and failed... THAT is the very nature of what forces us to not sit still, is what compels us to DO something, to do anything, to finally fulfill whatever it is that IS our greatest moment so far.
Looking into 12 and 13-year-old eyes is strange. They look to you for so much reflection. They expect adults to be as infinitely creative and communicative as they are, and I feel like I'm letting them down for ever being tired. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put one adult in a room in charge of 30 kids deserves a swift knee to the stomach. I'm drained, and it's only been two months.
Our youth don't find very many things interesting. Themselves. iPods. YouTube. MySpace. It got me thinking about our culture. Advertising, I suppose. How "America's business is business." I was talking about it with my Vice Principal today after school. Parents buy their kids things instead of having conversations with them, and then we're all left feeling lonely and unfulfilled.
I'm joining the gym near Target. It's starting to get brighter earlier, which is helping, but I'm looking to be healthy spiritually AND physically.
I'm working through Kozol's The Shame of the Nation, and his style is hard to penetrate. I'm enjoying it nonetheless. Books are really exciting, and I wish I was a faster reader. One of the questions he posed that I thought was interesting was how or where it begins that children start to distinguish what "haves" and "have nots" LOOK like. He was noticing that even at a young age, minority students in poor neighborhoods looked at him and asked why they didn't have the things HE had (as a white person, presumably). I think it ultimately comes down to a culture war.
Too, he made the argument that rich kids shouldn't be given preference to the best preschools because the assumption is that the parents of such children were highly educated themselves and can nurture their kids as well at home. My response was that they're gonna wanna get paid.
It's a destructive character trait that people don't want to do anything or put in any work for anything for "free." The lack of commitment to an idea, the lack of interest in supporting anything in its budding stages is interesting. It's a cultural (anti)value. It defines our very problem of killing creativity. We need to ask ourselves what behavior kills creativity and ask ourselves whether we think creativity is worth putting energy into. Do we want to be ants or do we want to be part of something that expresses our own infinite creativity? No, we're not always going to create something that is different from everything else, but seeing and constantly surrounding yourself with ideas, possibilities, things that were tried and succeeded, things that were tried and failed... THAT is the very nature of what forces us to not sit still, is what compels us to DO something, to do anything, to finally fulfill whatever it is that IS our greatest moment so far.