In response to Matt’s thoughts about education, a reader remarks that school children today are less respectful toward their teachers than students were in the past.

Matt responds:

I believe that what goes around comes around.  It seems to me that the whole culture has become more strident and divided between them and us.  Where does it come from?  I don’t know, but I have some ideas.

Home life sure isn’t what it used to be when I was a kid.  Things were much less complicated than now.  We didn’t know as much, but we probably knew more.  Now, it seems we’re at a big buffet where we sample everything, but after awhile we don’t know what we like and don’t like...  We just know that we want more.

I was always of the school that if 2 is good, then 2,000 must be better.  The older I get, the more minimalist I become.  I think of savoring a Puccini aria.  I know in the past, if I was getting out of my car, I couldn’t get out fast enough, so I’d turn off La Boheme if it was on the radio so I could run in and do something so important.  Now, listening to it all the way to the end is more important.

So life is different now, schools are different, the world is different.  I think all the communication systems we have today are great tools, but I’m not sure that we really know how to use them to enhance our lives.  I know we can use them to challenge ourselves, but can we savor the victories, enjoy the surroundings?  Can we truthfully be humble, accepting, loving?  Is kindness looked on as being weakness?

All these questions are really talking about:  What makes a great teacher? I looked at the recent answering of questions by the two U.S. Presidential candidates, and it seemed to me that even the definition of what the debate is, is part of the debate.  For example, when does life begin?  That’s probably one of the seminal questions we debate about.  When do we become who we are?  It used to be something that was really about, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”  Now it gets down to, “Can we eat the chicken?  Is the beef infected with mad cow?  Are you going to go crazy from eating a hamburger?”

When it comes to respect and children, the thing I like about children os that they still have their sense of wonder.  They have that until some adult comes and gives them a slap across the head and initiates them into the cruelness of life.

In the larger picture, if we don’t start addressing the problems from the root base, whatever they are, then I don’t know how we can have respect for each other.  If we give up on our children, then I think maybe we’re near the end, because that’s really the only thing we have:  the new generations.  Where are we going to go?  Back to clubs, beating the shit out of each other because we sat in the wrong spot around the fire or ate the wild boar’s foot instead of its hand or its ass?

The reason I’m calling for a New Los Alamos is respect and tolerance.  How are we going to get there?  Each and every one of us must ask that question of ourselves.  There isn’t an “us-versus-them” answer.  There is no “they,” there is only “us.”  We have to start defining these problems so we can find the beginnings of the answers. 

Thanks for the question,
Matt