Below my computer screen I have this quote:
You repay all people according to their deeds. – Psalm 62
It reminds me every day that the choices I make matter, that there are consequences to what I do. Furthermore, it emphasizes that I am not a mere passive pawn in the chess game of life but an active participant and that what I do no matters, even if only a tiny, tiny bit. I am OK with that, especially given what we know from Chaos theory’s concept of the Butterfly Effect. Yes, what I do may not seem to matter, but the fact is I do not know what ripples that emanate from the pebble that is my life may have – they could in fact, matter!
Now this obvious idea seems not to be so obvious to the younger people I know, especially the teenagers I have taught and most especially the one I am teaching right now. They do not experience direct consequences. What I have seen over a 30 year teaching career is the following titanic shift in attitude. Back in the 1980s the old adage “when the going gets tough the tough get going” applied to around 80% of the students I taught. That ratio seems to have reversed and now my experience is that 80% of the students give up when faced with a challenge, or a consequence. It seems that our society has become so “nice” that everybody deserves a “gold star” simply for an effort, even if that effort is far below what the student is capable of. I have seen the evolution of education from an attitude that failing some students was a good thing, having student complaints about a loving but harsh a teacher ignored as this type of teacher was seen as being absolutely necessary to the development of the character needed to learn well and deeply, to a modern educational paradigm where everybody’s special needs must be taken into account, where every student deserves the extra time that used to only be reserved for those with documented learning disabilities – in other words, we treat everybody as if they are disabled in some way, and thus without meaning to we treat everybody like a victim. This victim mentally, which we have created, means the students have become passive and easily find blame elsewhere for their lack of performance.
So, what does this all have to do our societal crises of Covid-19, Climate Change, Species, Extinction, etc. ? Everything. I am convinced that competent people who trust each other can work together to accomplish what seems impossible. There is ample evidence for this, from the Moon landing, to the development of Covid vaccine in a few months, to the building of the railroad across Canada. The people who participated in these challenges were not afraid, they were willing to take risks, they did not take no for an answer. They understand, deep in their bones, the consequences of failure, and this knowledge helped spur them on to do the impossible.
What can you and I do about this? Well, one little thing is this: we can tell the youth of today stories from the past where consequences were brutal and direct, and yet had, in the longer term, positive consequences. We can spend time helping them with their challenges by helping them see that challenges are not bad, that injustice is, unfortunately quite normal, but that we can and must do something to bring justice, but not by blame, but by looking within and finding the internal resources like hope and trust and goodness and optimism to work with others to overcome the challenges that are the norm in life. A too easy life is actually not a rich life, as stories of great people from the past [Sir Isaac Newton comes to mind, as I am teaching Calculus] make it clear that adversity can, if approached not as a threat but rather as a challenge which can be overcome, create character. Your challenge then is to spend time with a younger person [anybody under 40 qualifies!] and help them see that consequences are the way life is. This is not to be feared. This is not ‘bad’ – it just is. If you drop a hammer on your toe and break it – don’t blame the hammer, don’t blame gravity, blame your own stupidity, but don’t wallow in it – learn, and move on.
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