Sheltered from the World, Timid of Himself, and at a Loss When Life Confronts Him
- Screens are the modern-day version of Alice’s Wonderland; we slip through them and discover entertainment for every taste. We crave it, we yearn for it.
- Children—and many adults, for that matter—prefer to remain sheltered from the real world, letting life’s turbulence pass over them, untouched and undisturbed.
- Yet, when life inevitably confronts them, they find themselves utterly unprepared, at a loss for how to respond.
- This is vividly illustrated in children’s habitual excuses when they arrive late to class.
- The first thing they say is, “Sorry for being late, may I come in?” Yet, many of them fill their speech with placeholders like “like” or “you know…” or the word “типа.”
- To me, these filler words are significant. They serve as indicators that the student is at a loss when directly confronted, even though, as a teacher, I’m not truly confronting them. Being late is not a major issue for me.
- But for them, I still represent authority, and they feel compelled to seek permission.
- Had they arrived on time, they could have remained invisible, untouched by my attention. But by being late, they place themselves in the spotlight of my gaze—what I call the “Sauron’s eye”—and this makes them profoundly uncomfortable.
- The desire to distance themselves from the classroom, from the events unfolding within its walls, is both persistent and universal among students, especially those who attend against their will. And let’s be honest: most children are at school reluctantly.
- “Sorry for being late, Rustam Telmanovich, you know… there was traffic.”
- No, I don’t know. I wasn’t there; I didn’t witness it. But I can guess that some children travel from afar, and traffic—particularly in early September—can be quite heavy.
- When they arrive late, they come face-to-face with a situation: being tardy → needing to make an excuse → explaining themselves. For them, this simple interaction amounts to a direct life experience—one they are instinctively afraid of. ^8dce72
- ! Instead, they prefer to live in a simulated world, avoiding real-life confrontations.
- The ultimate paradox of education lies in its power to cultivate a mindset that embraces the complexities of life and the unpredictability of the events it entails.
- The purpose of education is not to transmit pre-digested knowledge, but to train a pattern of thinking that enables “students of life” to comprehend the inherent uncertainty of existence and to understand that they don’t know what they don’t know. This is known as unidentified ignorance.
- Unidentified ignorance is the major source of the paradoxes and difficult situations we often find ourselves in.
- When we learn something new, we are often confronted by this new knowledge—but our minds instinctively resist paradoxes. Humans are the most advanced prediction machines the universe has produced thus far. We abhor unresolved issues. We detest deviations from our plans, and we either ignore or attempt to resolve the discrepancies we encounter.
- When someone finds themselves back in the classroom, they face the ultimate paradox of education: they have been actively sealing themselves off from it.
- They shield themselves from questioning their existing values, the status quo, and their personal beliefs.
- When confronted with a paradox, such individuals revert to old habits—consuming instead of participating—and to rouse them from this inertia requires significant effort and energy from the teacher.
- For them, education is mere spectatorship, not the Socratic dialogue it should be—a dialogue about what constitutes a good life or how one can become a “good person.”
- The moment they step into the classroom, in their mind’s eye, they are entering a coliseum—not to learn, but to watch a performance they are certain will unfold, especially if they or their parents have paid for it.
BIO
theBrain mapping
Source:: Friend:: Child:: Next:: Desire to be entertained foster two dimensional people
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