Sunday, January 31, 2010

Remain After Class


'Appropriate'.  Such a teacherly word, designed for erratic teens to hold back the hormone bounce that makes them use their hands either to feel or hit.

When something is 'appropriated', it's taken away.  If you are a 'proprietor', you own something, have legal status to possession.  

So reigning in 'the kids' means not only helping them avoid trespass mistakes, violations of others' bodies and sense of 'space', but it means alerting them (at least implicitly) to an exercise of Power Above Them. 

A reinforcement of the yet more primal 'family drama' where true helplessness simply mistakes even benign physical activity for threat.

When does Nature, when does Society, relax control?  Do we ever get to develop ourselves without interference, however well-intended, that chokes us, early, off?

.

No comments:

Post a Comment