The Difficult Role of Grades & Honors in School Life
Dear Alfie,
I follow your argument, nodding my head as I go and then I realize it hasn't "solved" my problem. It's an important way of thinking, but stops short of being a good answer in the daily life of schools.
Am I asking for too much? After all, if it's as sensible as you and I think, how come the world is still plagued by its obsession with punishment?
"In the long run ..." my mother used to say, "he'll pay for it." That satisfied me—and was the basis of the Hollywood code in my youth for how movies must end. But now that I've lived a long time I know it's not true. Nor can I even hope that there's a hell for those miscreants because any God who would support such acts of everlasting torture can't be the God I hope for.
The thirst for personal "revenge" can be transformed, to some extent, into the wish for some benign power who will straighten out the scales of justice. A parent, teacher, older brother, or ... the wise and omnipotent ruler. In
I follow your argument, nodding my head as I go and then I realize it hasn't "solved" my problem. It's an important way of thinking, but stops short of being a good answer in the daily life of schools.
Am I asking for too much? After all, if it's as sensible as you and I think, how come the world is still plagued by its obsession with punishment?
"In the long run ..." my mother used to say, "he'll pay for it." That satisfied me—and was the basis of the Hollywood code in my youth for how movies must end. But now that I've lived a long time I know it's not true. Nor can I even hope that there's a hell for those miscreants because any God who would support such acts of everlasting torture can't be the God I hope for.
The thirst for personal "revenge" can be transformed, to some extent, into the wish for some benign power who will straighten out the scales of justice. A parent, teacher, older brother, or ... the wise and omnipotent ruler. In
