Society

I had an incredible conversation with my students about a whole bunch of things after school today.  I mean, we talked for an hour and 45 minutes and it felt like 20 minutes.  It was awesome and it was pretty much the reason I became a teacher in the first place.  Yes, I like imparting knowledge and getting students prepared for the next step(s) in life, but so much of that preparation takes place outside of the defined hours of a school day.  There's so much that I want to tell the students that may be inappropriate during class.  But when I can share personal experiences and go deeper into any and every subject, I had been successful.  I have finally done what I needed to do!

Anyway, one of our topics of conversation today was society.  Much of our conversation stemmed from Into  The Wild (a development I couldn't be prouder of) and how it fits into small and larger scale living.  Society, we agreed, is more or less mob mentality.  It tells people what to believe and how to act.  If you don't act in that way, then you are judged.  It's sad but it's totally true.  If you try and have a unique opinion, you are deemed racist or judgmental or misguided or just plain wrong.  But why?  Shouldn't we be a country of acceptance?  Why must the majority opinion guide a supposedly open society?  What went wrong with society that it is now par for the course for giving up without trying or accepting failure or breeding mediocrity or taking handouts ad infinitum?  Where is the can-do, pick yourself up by the bootstraps attitude?

We talked about organized religion and its trappings, what a Higher Power means to each of us, texting rules, the ideal mates, parents, traveling, Madison High School, school of choice problems, and the society cycle of messed up parents giving rise to more and more messed up kids.  It was heavy.  I was happy.