Punishing The Good, Rewarding The Wicked

The other night, Ian complained about an injustice that he encountered in school, and he was certainly miffed.  He told me that he saw that Tyler was inside school, reading a book, while everyone else went out to recess.  Of course, Ian was rather intrigued by this most envious of circumstances, and investigated.  It turned out that Young Tyler was actually remaining in the building during this unfortunate outside activity as a punishment, of all things.

Ian wished  that he, too, could join in this "punishment," staying inside and reading a book, but he was sufficiently confident that The Powers That Be would not grant him this desire, that he didn't even bother to ask.  The next day, Saturday, at the playground, Ian was still talking about it; he couldn't believe that this cozy little arrangement of Tyler's was actually a punishment, and he was unhappy at the thought that his school probably wouldn't accommodate someone who wished to join the company of The Naughty.

I told him I thought he was probably right - the teachers/administrators probably wouldn't have let Ian join Tyler's solitary literary circle, because recess is actually part of school's formative curriculum.  I proposed, as  frivolous and American as this might sound, that the school probably feels that learning how to make friends and spend time with peers is actually part of the overall education, part of the school's mission.  But of course, that's just one opinion, as Ian quickly established, clearly trying to refrain from descending into outright rudeness amidst all of his frustration:

"Well, I don't agree with you."

Not everybody cares for freaky hippies like John Dewey, who have managed to turn classical education to touchie-feely mush...

(April 19-20, 2013)