Essays 1-20

I don’t like the term “spoiled child,” and I don’t use it. The term implies that the child has a life that is too easy – maybe there’s “too much” attention, material wealth, companionship, whatever other people don’t have enough of. I’ve known and I know many children, and I can easily apply many descriptive…

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…

I don’t quite have the reading habit. I read often, for information, inspiration, and/or entertainment. When I was a student, I sometimes read because I was supposed to. But for me, putting down a book is rarely difficult; it gives me a chance to rest my eyes and brain, and it enables me to write,…

I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Blue’s stages of development. They refer to children’s evolving perception of their parents. They are based on years of anecdotal data. Unlike many systems that describe human beings, they haven’t been memorized by any undergraduates or discussed in seminars. You can decide, as you read, whether and how…

We don’t like to think we cause problems. We don’t like to think we even contribute to them. When we see problems, we like to solve them. If we’re not successful, we like to find someone to blame. Scapegoating has caused some of the ugliest chapters in history, but it’s also pretty common in everyday…

I’m challenging another dichotomy. The open classroom, according to one of my professors, started in England during World War II. Many teachers went off to war, and they were replaced in classrooms by adults who had no idea how to run a classroom. So they gave lots of responsibility to children – put them in…