Matching Tracksuits

Month: February 2024

Leap Day

Thursday 29 February 2024

I was very surprised for a moment when checking the Time Machine widget at the bottom of the site: only four entries for this day?! And then I remembered the date.

And realized one of the entries had to do with the kitchen remodel Babcia and Dziadek decided to do when K and I got engaged. They’d planned to do something else with the money, but in the end, they went for the remodel. “If we’re going to have guests from the States…” I seem to recall Dziadek explaining.

Looking at that picture, I think how much younger Babcia looked. It was twenty years ago, and it hits me: in this picture, she’s only a handful of years older than I am now. And the last two decades have simply floated by without any effort and little notice.

And the next two decades?

For the one of a sentence

Wednesday 28 February 2024

One sentence — one single, simple sentence, the contents of which students already had planned in class. It was merely a matter of taking two phrases and generalizing. That was one class’s homework last night. In fulfillment of one of the many instructional standards for the eighth-grade language arts curriculum, students were working to write a single sentence that expressed the main idea of a multi-paragraph non-fiction text. We’d examined the text in class. Student effort hadn’t been stellar, but the majority fulfilled the most basic criteria for the small project. We had in place everything we needed to write that sentence, but we’d run out of time. The homework was something like leftovers: we didn’t have time, do it at home.

One sentence, probably no longer than ten words. Out of a class of twenty-five, four did the “work” in its entirety, one had begun writing the sentence but was less than half finished, three had the presence of mind to jot the sentence on a piece of paper as I was checking that other students had completed the work, and the rest did nothing.

One sentence, and sixty-six percent of the class was too lazy, too unmotivated to do it. “I had better things to do with my time,” one “student” said. “I forgot,” another said. “I just didn’t want to do it,” a third explained.

In a flash, I saw the possible future, and it was terrifying. Students in the second world — countries like China, Brazil, and India — see what we have, and they want it. Their parents see it, and they want their children to have it. And so they work for it. They work for the education that will give them the job that will allow them to buy that smartphone, that flat-screen television, that car — their little version of the American dream, exported and translated.

“Yet we already have it — we’ve won. We’ve got nothing to worry about,” replies the consumer prevailing (often unacknowledged or even unrealized) “wisdom.” True, we won. In the Cold War, we came out on top. What spurred us? A moment like we’re facing now, a moment where we realize our ascendancy is being eclipsed. We’ve grown complacent, though, and most feel our current reality could never truly disappear.

Yet looking at the standings of US students among those from the rest of the world, it certainly does appear that they want education — and all that that brings with it — more than we in the already-ascended West.

Four Numbers

Tuesday 27 February 2024

The setup is simple: two circles of desks created of triads of one inner-circle desk and two outer-circle desks. Students in the inner circle can talk; students in the outer circle can only listen until they tag in and exchange places with an inner-circle student. However, the desks are usually set up in rows, so students have to rearrange the desks to get them in these circles.

I often race classes to see who can settle the rearrangement the fastest. The results are telling:

My P4 and P5 classes are my honors classes; my P6 and P7 classes are my on-level groups. The result is consistent: the honors classes get the job done faster than the on-level classes.

Why is this?

The on-level classes sometimes refer to the honors classes as “the smart-kids classes,” and I often point out that they’re not smarter. They usually just work harder. They stay focused in class and give their best effort at all times. When I ask them to do something at home, they generally do it. The thing is, they’ve been doing this for years, so they’ve gradually become increasingly better students — better readers, better writers.

I know that for many of the honors kids, there is a socioeconomic element at play as well. They most likely live in homes with more books. Their fathers and mothers are lawyers and teachers, so they see reading and writing modeled frequently. And most of them come from two-parent family, which offers great economic advantages over single-parent households. This is not to say all these factors are true for all honors students or that none of these factors are true for on-level students. There are a lot of factors at play.

Be all that as it may, though, the honors kids get the desks arranged faster. This is connected to executive functioning more than academic achievement. So which came first? Probably neither: both were nurtured at every turn by a number of different adults, and the numbers tell that story.

LW School

Monday 26 February 2024

A century-old shot of an old school in Lipnica. I passed this building every time I left or arrived in Lipnica.

Spilled Kasza

Friday 23 February 2024

That we even have it is a sign…

Fluff

Thursday 22 February 2024

George Carlin once called religion “the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims” in his “religion is bullshit” bit:

Part of the bullshit of the Christian religion is its attempts to verbally meander itself out of the corners it paints itself into. Christianity is a monotheistic religion; it also has a god that has three persons; but that’s not the same as three gods; but it’s three distinct persons.

Bullshit.

Catholicism is particularly adept at this kind of word salad, this verbal meandering, that says absolutely nothing but sure sounds fancy nonetheless. Here’s Bishop Robert Barron’s take on how the Trinity makes sense:

God is, in his ownmost reality, not a monolith but a communion of persons. From all eternity, the Father speaks himself, and this Word that he utters is the Son. A perfect image of his Father, the Son shares fully the actuality of the Father: unity, omniscience, omnipresence, spiritual power. This means that, as the Father gazes at the Son, the Son gazes back at the Father. Since each is utterly beautiful, the Father falls in love with the Son and the Son with the Father-and they sigh forth their mutual love. This holy breath (Spiritus Sanctus) is the Holy Spirit. These three “persons” are distinct, yet they do not constitute three Gods.

Robert Barron, This Is My Body

In what sense could one being be said to “speak himself” and then have this “Word that he utters” be both “the Son” and himself? How the hell does a being speak another being that’s the same being? It’s nonsense.

And then there’s this: “This means that, as the Father gazes at the Son, the Son gazes back at the Father. Since each is utterly beautiful, the Father falls in love with the Son and the Son with the Father-and they sigh forth their mutual love.” What is this, a theological Harlequin Romance? It’s so vapid that I’m embarrassed for Barron: the man has a doctorate from the Sorbonne (I think), and he writes nonsense like that?!

Source

Wednesday 21 February 2024

At E’s basketball practice a few weeks ago, I noticed some Catholic reading materials free for the taking, so always interested in what others say about religion, I took some copies. One of them was This Is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival by Bishop Robert Barron, whom I’ve written about here and here (among other posts).

The Good Reads blurb summarizes:

A recent Pew Forum survey revealed the startling statistic that 69% of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. For the majority of Catholics today, the Eucharist is merely a symbol of Christ, and the Mass is merely a collectivity of like-minded individuals gathering to remember his life.

This indicates a spiritual disaster, for the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” In response to this crisis, Bishop Robert Barron, then the Chair of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, began working with his brother bishops on a solution. From these conversations, the National Eucharistic Revival was born.

This Is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival is designed to accompany that revival. In this brief but illuminating text, Bishop Barron offers a threefold analysis of the Eucharist as sacred meal, sacrifice, and Real Presence, helping readers to understand the sacrament of Jesus’ Body and Blood more thoroughly so that they might fall in love with him more completely.

Discover the profound truth flowing out of Jesus’ words at the Last “Take, eat; this is my body. . . . Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant.”

I’ll have a lot more to say about the topic of the book later, but there was one little bit that caught my eye this evening:

One of the most beautiful evocations of this heavenly meal is found in the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel. The author of John’s Gospel was a literary genius, and his work is marked by subtle and intricate symbolism. Therefore, we must proceed carefully as we examine this story.

It seems this depiction of John writing his gospel (of course, John didn’t write the gospel; all four gospels are anonymous, with the names we associate with them becoming attached a century or two after they were written, if memory serves) describes a strictly human author. The human author of the book seems to be the literary genius. But wasn’t the author God according to Christians? How can both of these statements be true?

It’s really part of the song and dance more liberal Christians use to deal with the trickier parts of the Bible while holding on to the tasty bits they enjoy. The ugly parts? That’s human. The beautiful parts? That’s God.

But a Catholic like Barron would take a self-contradictory notion that there were human limitations but God’s still the ultimate author. Pious Catholics, it seems, don’t have a problem with contradictions, but one only need look at the topic of Barron’s book — transubstantiation — to see that.

Bed and Faith

Tuesday 20 February 2024

Written on Wednesday 14 July 2021 at 6:54 PM

Getting out of bed is so simple an act that we do it without thinking. We might sometimes want to stay in bed a bit longer, but the act of slinging our feet off the bed and hoisting ourselves into a sitting position — we don’t give that much thought.

When I had my hernia surgery some six years ago, I realized how much we use our abdominal muscles to get out of bed, and because those muscles were terribly sore after surgery, I thought very much about getting out of bed. It was painful, and I wanted to get out of bed quickly to lessen the time my muscles burned, but the act of getting out of bed quickly made them hurt all the more. It was a lose-lose situation. The decision to get out of bed, then, was always a reluctant one.

On the other hand, every time I’ve overslept, I’ve leapt out of bed in a single motion, and it’s a conscious act: I’ve got to get out of the bed as fast as possible and into the shower as fast as possible so I can get dressed and bolt downstairs as fast as possible to grab something to shove down my throat as fast as possible so I can get to work as fast as possible.

Other than that, I rarely think about getting out of bed. The physical act is simple, effortless, and without consideration of its simple significance, a significance that doesn’t appear as such until the ability to do so disappears.

In two or three weeks my father has gone from being semi-independent (such that we could leave him alone for stretches up to eight hours) to being completely bedridden. I don’t think he’s quite come to accept that fact or even completely to understand it. There’s still hope in his mind that he will one day be walking again. I don’t think that’s the case; the doctors don’t think that’s the case; and deep down, he probably doesn’t think it’s the case. Several times a day he tries to get out of bed only for us to remind him that it’s not safe for him to get out of bed. He says things like, “I can’t wait until I get out of this bed and get back to normal.” He doesn’t realize that this new normal is just that, nor does he realize that tragically this new normal will only last for some period of time (weeks? months?) before the next dip, the next drop in his condition, the next “new normal.”

Every new normal makes the previous one look like a paradise. Every new normal reminds us all anew that no matter how trying and depressing for all of us involved, it’s only going to get more trying and more depressing. Every new normal makes the old one seem eons ago. Every new normal quickly begins to feel like it will always be normal, that it will stagnate. That it has stagnated. And then another dip. Another episode. Another new normal.

And the bed he occupies becomes his whole environment, his whole world, his prison.

How anyone could watch how this man is suffering mentally and emotionally and believe that the god he dedicated his life to, supported fiscally (so to speak), and was eternally devoted to would turn his back on him in his time of need — how anyone could think in such a situation that a god like that could exist, and if that god did exist, how it could be considered anything other than capricious and evil, I just don’t know. Belief gives hope, apologists claim. Yet it also gives despair. “What have I done to deserve this?” Dad has asked in his lucid moments. “Why won’t God do something after I’ve devoted my life to him?” Nana pleaded. For both of them, I think, it’s not a matter of “Why doesn’t God heal me so I can go back to my normal life” but something more basic: “Why is God allowing me to suffer like this instead of just letting me die peacefully in my sleep tonight? Why do I wake up day after day to this same prison?”

He remains, as far as I can tell, steadfast in his faith. “I know where I’m going” is his general demeanor, and that might give him some comfort. But I can’t help but think that perhaps that comfort is not worth the anguish it also brings.

In the meantime, we try to comfort him in those admittedly-rare moments of angst, keep him calm throughout the day, and help him take each day in his bed one moment at a time. I don’t know that there’s much more we could hope to do.

Back to Normal

Monday 19 February 2024

Babcia made it back to Polska without too much stress or adventure. There’s always a little with Babcia, though.

And so everything returns to normal. Even here. At least tonight.

Last night

Friday 16 February 2024

An unpublished entry from the end of our 2022 visit to Poland.

The Boy’s stuff is spread throughout the house: toys on the living room, play money in the kitchen, shoes in a variety of locations. My stuff is spread just as widely. So much to remember tomorrow. I’ve got to clean and cover the fire pit in the gazebo. I’ve got to bring two bikes upstairs, remembering to take the pedals off my bike to take back to the States but remember to leave the shoes for next time.

ANd I sit here wondering if I’ve done all I could have here. Have I rolled in nostalgia enough?” Is another way to put it. I met almost no one from my side here—few former students (always a joy) and no former colleagues. It’s the first time that’s ever happened. We often come back just before the end of the Polish school year, and I simply have to drop in at my former school to meet a lot of people. This year, we didn’t arrive until a week or more after the year was over, so it was only a matter of chance whether or not I met anyone.

I did get to meet with my absolute best friend here, which I was unable to accomplish during our last visit in 2017. I’m not even sure if we got to meet in 2015. Still, we had a chance to sit around drinking beer and talking about nonsense like old times. Sort of. E was with me; neither of us touch cigarettes anymore; we didn’t listen to any music (no exclamations about the perfection of the coming guitar solo); it was in the afternoon in the gazebo he built on his parents’ property during his Covid lockdown. “I had to do something” he explained.

Again wallowing in nostalgia, I guess. Looking for the joy of repetition, even in the small things.

“And it doesn’t come back, but I’ll be looking all of my life.”

Spring 2024 Soccer Season

Thursday 15 February 2024

We’ve begun yet another season of soccer. We managed to get the Boy with the same coach he had last season, which made his day; several of the same boys rejoined the team as well, which made his day even more.

Coping

Tuesday 13 February 2024

An article by Karl Vaters entitled “13 Reasons Not to Worry About the Future of the Church” offers insight into how Christians are dealing with the nosedive in attendance and affiliation they are experiencing in America. Vaters acknowledges this immediately:

The church is in trouble.

It must be. My blog feed keeps telling me it is.

For several years now, barely a day goes by without someone writing about the imminent demise of the body of Christ.

Everyone seems to have a different reason why they think the church is dying:

  • The “nones” are growing faster than the church
  • The “dones” are leaving faster than we’re replacing them
  • People aren’t singing together any more
  • Offerings are way down
  • Regulars attend less often than they used to

The post-pandemic turndown seems to be permanent in many places
But despite all the gloom and doom, I have not lost one moment of sleep over the demise of the church.

That Vaters feels no stress reveals the basic disconnect between believers and non-believers on this matter, and that gap is, I’m afraid, permanent and unbridgeable.

It’s evident from the first of thirteen points he makes:

Point 1: The Church Belongs to Jesus, Not Us.

The explanation for this point is one sentence: “And Jesus knows what he’s doing.” God is in control, believers insist, and so even if it looks bleak, his steadfastness is cause for calm. But this, of course, assumes that Jesus/God exists and operates the way Christians believe he does. They are not open to the possibility that the reason people are leaving religion is because they’ve realized the truth: gods don’t exist. Instead, these people are somehow deceived or never were Christians to begin with. This seems a little obvious, perhaps even axiomatic, but the shortsightedness inherent in such a position (“We could be wrong!”) means they will be in constant denial about the reality of the problem, and as it worsens, some of Vaters’s more moderate positions might radicalize.

Point 2: The Picture Is Not As Bleak as We Think

His second point is an attempt to make things global:

While the European and North American church is dealing with significant issues, the church in many parts of the world is experiencing strong, steady growth. As reported at Lifeway.com, “There are fewer atheists around the world today (147 million) than in 1970 (165 million), and the Gordon-Conwell report expects the number to continue to decline into 2050.” Plus, “Not only is religion growing overall, but Christianity specifically is growing,” especially in the global south.

We could summarize this point as follows: Sure, in the West, where scientific literacy is steadily rising, religion is on the decline. But in the developing world, where scientific literacy lags, it’s growing.

If the growth of your religion is most pronounced where scientific literacy is most lacking, it doesn’t say much about the foundations of your religion.

Point 3: The Church Always Thrives Under Persecution

Christians have a persecution complex: they see it as inevitable because it’s throughout the New Testament. True Christians suffer for their faith. This is so engrained in the Christian psyche that I’m not surprised it appears this early and only surprised that it wasn’t the second point.

If persecution is coming to the American church (which is where almost all of this hand-wringing is coming from) it may reduce church attendance numbers and perceived cultural influence, but it won’t kill the church.

Prosperity is far more dangerous to the church than persecution has ever been. As the Puritan writer Cotton Mather put it in the early 1700s, “Religion brought forth prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”

This point seems more like pop psychology than measured reasoning. It also ignores the reality driving this decline. People aren’t leaving the church because they have cushy lives — not exclusively, anyway. They’re realizing they don’t need this in their lives anymore, and they have tools at their disposal (read: the internet) that puts dissenting views and reasoning well within their grasp. They can begin by feeling church is just not for them anymore and fill that in later (as they so choose) with good critical analysis of Christian theology that makes them add, “Well, not only do I not need it but it also just doesn’t really make a lot of sense when I think about it.”

Point 4: Loss of Privilege Is Not the Same As Persecution

This point is actually refreshing.

The removal of the Ten Commandments monument from a courthouse is not persecution.

I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s not persecution.

There are Christians in places like Syria and Iran who know what real persecution feels like. When we claim persecution for what is a loss of privilege, we minimize the real persecution our brothers and sisters face all over the world today.

It does feel a little like Vaters can’t make up his mind, though: are Christians facing persecution or not? As church attendance continues to dwindle, he might shift his opinion on this a bit.

Point 5: The Church Is at Its Best When We Are Counter-Cultural

I get the feeling that this is an attempt to be a little edgy, but it is in fact quite ridiculous:

The church doesn’t hold the reins of power well. We’re better in a burr-in-the-saddle role than being the conquering hero on the stallion. Let’s leave that role to Jesus himself.

Christianity has dominated the Western world for most of the last 1,700 years. It’s had a near-total monopoly on the culture. Its myths fill our collective consciousness. For hundreds of years it had the power to compel compliance through various means (including torture). To suggest that at any time in modern history it’s only been a “burr-in-the-saddle” of society is absolutely ridiculous.

This is why Christians are panicking. They are losing that monopoly. They are losing their political and cultural power. And they are going crazy about it.

Point 6: The Church Is Bigger than Our Buildings and Our Denominations

Churches are being turned into residential units, bars, and even skateparks. What are we to make of that?

We are likely to lose many church buildings in the coming decades. This will be especially challenging for churches with full-time pastors and a mortgage. I also foresee massive stress points coming for most, if not all, denominations.

I sympathize with those who love their church’s historic building and their denomination, only to lose one or both. But I’m grateful that buildings and denominations are not needed for the church to survive and thrive.

In fact, we may need to lean on our buildings and denominations less in order to lean on Jesus more.

This point is just to serve as a balm to those handwringing traditionalists who are upset about the material decline in the church, nothing else.

Point 7: The Church Is People Who Love Jesus, God’s Word, and Each Other

If churches aren’t buildings, what are they?

This is one of the main reasons the church thrives under persecution. It forces us to turn to what really matters and can never be taken away – loving Jesus, following the Bible, and caring for each other.

Churches (particularly Protestant churches, especially those that align with the Evangelical movement) maintain their hold on people through the social cohesion they provide. Non-theistic churches are forming that attempt to fill this void, so this point is a non-starter from the beginning.

Point 8: The Church Has Faced Bigger Problems Than This (Whatever Your “This” May Be)

Besides, Vaters says, it’s not all that bad:

Whatever your real or perceived church crisis may be, it is not “the greatest calamity the church has ever faced.”

We tend to magnify the severity of small pains that are close to us, while diminishing the reality of much larger pains that are further removed from us.

The church has faced far bigger problems than what most of us are currently experiencing, but those problems are so far away from us that they feel insignificant. The church survived them all.

But it is that bad. Christians fail, intentionally or unconsciously, to realize exactly what the problem is.

The internet is killing the church. It is exposing young people to more and more arguments against theism in general and Christianity in particular. These ideas weren’t widely diseminated in times past. A thousand years ago, uttering such criticism would risk death. Now, it’s everywhere. And content creators are getting better and better at presenting the dark and illlogical sides of Christanity, and Christianity just keeps throwing the same apologetics mud at them. And here, the internet applies something new: reactions to those apologetics. Discections of those apologetics. Critical analysis of those apologetics. So not only does the internet provide the initial explanation of why Christianity makes no sense, it provides answers to Christians’ attempts to explain away those faultlines and fractures, and it shows apologetics to be hollow, shallow, and repetative.

Point 9: My Corner of the Church Is Not the Church

I’m not sure why Vaters put this one in here:

My segment of the body of Christ may be tied to a particular worship style, theological stance, historical background, denominational identity, or any of a wide variety of other distinctives. But the way I worship is not the church. It’s just my little corner of it. If the way I like to worship becomes less popular, that has nothing to do with the strength of the church as a whole.

In fact – brace yourselves – even if the church in America collapses, as tragic as that would be, it would not mean the end of the church.

Jesus has sheep that are not of this fold.

It’s really a tweak of point 6.

Point 10: Maybe the Parts that Can’t Survive Shouldn’t

This point seems like it’s going in a direction of critical self-examination.

I know that sounds harsh, and it may even be triggering for many small-church pastors who have heard something similar because of their lack of numerical gowth. But the small church is not the issue.

This is not a point about size, but of type.

Anything Jesus does will not just survive, but thrive. Eternally. So I have to wonder, if my favorite form of church is dying, maybe it’s because Jesus isn’t building it?

Everything but the church itself (as defined in point #7, above) has an expiration date. No denomination, worship style, or tradition is forever. Sometimes a congregation, tradition, or denomination dies because it has finished serving its purpose.

This point is not meant to trivialize the very real pain of a local church going through serious hardships. I stand with you. Like John said to the suffering saints in Philadelphia (Rev 3:7-13), “I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” You have my heart, my prayers, and any help I can offer.

Instead, though, Vaters is simply using an old apologetics technique applied to those those who leave the faith to explain why some churches are failing: they weren’t really Christian.

Point 11: The Church Is the Most Relentlessly Growing Organism In History

This, too, is a short point — two sentences.

For almost 2,000 years of great triumphs and horrifying persecution, the church keeps going.

When Jesus builds something it tends to stand. And stand strong.

The fact that it’s been dominate in the political and cultural machinary of Europe and America for centuries has nothing to do with its longevity. It’s all Jesus’s work.

Remember when we used to worshop Zeus? Neither do I. Worshiping Jesus will eventually seem as antiquated.

Point 12: Worry Doesn’t Work

Another one-sentence explanation: “In fact, worry makes it worse.” This smacks of desparation, but I could be reading more into it than is really there.

Point 13: Jesus Told Us Not to Worry About Anything

The bottom line:

You can toss the previous 12 points. This is all I need to know.

To wildly (but hopefully not inappropriately) paraphrase Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5:25-33:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your church building, where you will worship or fellowship; or about your denomination, what decisions it will make. Is not the church more important than buildings, and the faith more important than denominational creeds? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his church’s life or a dollar to its offering basket? But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Whatever is of worry is not of faith.

And we need all the faith we can get.

Vaters is doing his best to cope with the coming reality, but he’s still in denial, so he will never accept it when it comes.

karlvaters.com/future-of-the-church/

Monday Thoughts

Monday 12 February 2024

School Thoughts

We received a new student on our team today: a fifteen-year-old boy from Central America who doesn’t speak a word of English and has not been in school since the first grade.

I have reservations.

I’m not fussing about any extra work entailed by having such a kid in my classroom. I’ve already got two complete-non-speakers and a fourth kid who barely speaks English. My reservations are about how effectively I can really help these kids. They are, of course, in my lowest level classes, which means there are a lot of behavior issues in those classes. I’m supposed to create a new curriculum for these boys because they’re so low with their English that modified materials don’t do anything for them in my class. In science, yes. In math, certainly. In social studies, a qualified yes. In English class, though? It’s impossible just to modify the curriculum. This newest student is illiterate in his first language: I can’t modify my curriculum that includes standards like “Determine one or more themes and analyze the development and relationships to character, setting, and plot over the course of a text; provide an objective summary” and “Determine the figurative and connotative meanings of words and phrases as they are used in text; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies texts.” You can’t do this with pictures. Besides, I struggle teaching the native speakers these things because of their low motivation — teaching a non-English-speaking student with the aid of pictures? Not going to happen. So I’ll have to invent a curriculum for these boys.

Is that type of teaching really in these boys’ best interest? Wouldn’t a part-time immersion with classes like gym and art coupled with a couple of direct English instruction courses be more effective? The people at the district office downtown will say, “No, the data don’t support that.” But I think that’s bullshit. I know from my own experience in Poland that dumping me into an environment where I didn’t speak the language without any direct language instruction would have only frustrated me, and that’s with me being 22 years old at that time. If I were only 14 in such a situation — forget it.

Parenting Thoughts

The Boy’s church league basketball team had their last game this evening, which sadly they lost 22-30. It was a tough season: they went 1-8. But it wasn’t the losing that bothered the Boy so much; it was the unsportsmanlike conduct so many of the players on the other teams exhibited. Tonight, for example, there was one boy who screamed at every shot attempt our team made in an effort to distract our boys.

I had some choice words to say in texts to K about this kid’s behavior.

“Just keep your cool,” she gently reminded me.

“Of course — he’s just a kid,” I replied. But that type of behavior doesn’t come from nowhere. Either his parents never tried to correct him because they saw nothing wrong with it, or they actively encouraged and/or taught him to behave like that.

Were I to coach such a kid, I’d tell him and his parents, “Look, if you do that, I bench you for the quarter. You do it again, it’s for the rest of the game. And every time after that, it’s for the rest of the game.”

The Boy’s inherently empathetic outlook on things means such behavior would never enter his mind. Was that something we had to teach him? I guess we did, but I don’t remember doing so, and I suspect his empathy would lead him not to do that even if we didn’t explicitly teach him that.

Hearts

Sunday 11 February 2024