Well, we’re back from Chicago and getting ready for a new school year. Dina’s been quite the inquisitive young lady lately, about some pretty big-ticket items, as evidenced by the following encounters:
1. Yosefblog has been reading David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. Dina saw it on his bedside table and asked:
Dina: What’s this about?
yb: Well, it’s about infinity, and how lots of people used to think that if you thought about infinity too much, you’d go crazy.
Dina: I’ve been thinking about infinity my whole life! Are you telling me I’m crazy?!
2. I came home from a particularly trying day working with a pilot program at my school meant to create a values-based education curriculum.
Dina: So, how was your day at school?
Me: To tell the truth, a little stressful. I’m not sure how I feel about this values-based curriculum.
Dina: Why?
Me: Well, what might be some of the problems you encounter with trying to teach students to be “good people”?
Dina: Well, what if they’re just really bad people and they won’t do it?
Me: That could be a problem. Or, what if their idea of what’s good in a certain situation is just different from what we’re teaching? Should we make them do it the way the school has determined is best?
Dina: No, you should let the students decide for themselves.
Me: But then, sometimes, they might make decisions that would really hurt other people, or themselves. So this is the issue I’m struggling with.
Dina: Ahhh…I see…
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