Essays 1-20

I think it was Socrates who said, “Know thyself.” What a deceptively simple thing for him to say! In some ways, we do start out knowing ourselves. We know what we need: food, comfort, warmth, and company. And those needs start out being a big part of who we are. Everybody else has the hard…

It’s nice to have job security. It makes it so you can concentrate on being good, and stop worrying so much about looking good. But teachers do lose their jobs. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the quality of the teacher; a position is eliminated, and a competent, valuable teacher has to look for…

I believe, despite what could be considered some evidence to the contrary, that everything we really need to teach and learn can be presented and received effectively in a way that’s enjoyable. I believe that there are ways to avoid the drudgery that’s often involved in school, and that avoiding it doesn’t have to involve…

Sometimes a child comes up to me and tells me, with conviction, something that simply isn’t true. As a teacher, I used to make a big thing of it. After all, truth is pretty important to us teachers. Colleges print “Veritas” on their flags and stationery – even etch it on to their stone buildings….

I’ve never understood football, and I’ve never really wanted to. Seeing people play it, and seeing people watch people play it, live or on television, I got the distinct impression that it was not my kind of game. It seemed to be a game in which knocking people down was supposed to be a good…

People talk to each other. One of the reasons they do so is that they like to trade ideas that work and warn each other about ideas that don’t. At its best, that’s one of the great tendencies communities have; it makes learning more likely. Alone, we have neither anywhere near as many good ideas…