1st Grade Philosophy

A few weeks ago I was teaching one of my smallest classes at the Kindergarten about rules and their importance. We went through the normal procedure of introducing the topic, reading a little about it and asking follow-up questions. Now, one of the questions was "Do you think rules are important? Why?". Only one of my students offered an answer. Mickey, is the little gentleman of the class (as the other two students are both girls). He usually comes to class wearing his soccer boots and always carries in a cup of cold green tea. He also never fails to remind me that Korea beat Greece 1-0 in London. I had to remind him it was a friendly game and didn't mean much as Greece were the last Euro champions.


Me: "Are rules important?"
Mickey: "Yes."
Me: "Why are they important Mickey?"
Mickey: "Because people do bad things if no rules."
Me: "Why will people do bad things?"
Mickey: "Because people are bad."
Me: "Not really. Some people are good and some are bad."
Mickey: "No. People are bad."
Me: "Do you think people are born bad?"
Mickey: "Yes."
Me: "Why do you think like that?"
Mickey: "Because they are."

3000 years of philosophical debate on whether humans are born good, bad or are a blank slate and an 8 year old 'knows' we are born bad. Mind you, this is the same student that says he wants to have a crack party and all he had for lunch was crack. Among elementary school students, they love bringing snacks to school and having a 'snack party'. Somehow he confuses 'crackers' with crack and I end up on the floor laughing.

On the other hand, when I told this story to the teachers I work with a few of them thought 'crackers' were white people dancing.

This conversation came back to me when I finished reading "The Devil and Miss Prym". Though Paulo Coelho is a great writer and the author that set me off on my path that led here, this is not one of his better stories. It does offer a few interesting insights though. My favourite is the idea that terror is our real master. We reason we do anything or don't do something is because of fear. Example, people will not break the law not out of respect for the law but rather from a fear of being punished. So, according to our Lilliputian philosopher if you remove the fear of being punished for breaking the law people will invariably 'do bad things'.

For me, I defeated terror long ago. He dropped this and this.