The kids would sit in my office after some offensive act
The persecution of a weaker student
Verbal or physical
The abuse of a teacher
The persistent disruption of a class
Theft…
First there would be the investigation… did the offence take place
Honesty was rewarded with leniency
Recalcitrant denials and lies, proven by careful gathering of cross referenced evidence evoked greater wrath.
The honesty was a good step for it enabled us to enter into a dialog
A dissection of cause and effect
An examination of the values involved
The values of the institution in which they must, for now, survive
The reason for those values
The importance of respect – earned and shown
The survival skills needed for later life
Workplace or broader community
Was the student really thinking about this?
Were they participating or was this lip service?
For first time offences, if not too serious deprivation of another’s liberty, this dialog was enough… but if you repeat the mistake too easily… we resort to Pavlov styled conditioning and inflict unpleasant consequences.
An essay on the topic
Scab duty in the yard
Lesson by lesson behaviour monitoring
Or that age old cross cultural consequence for those that threaten the social order – exile
Exclusion in the form of suspension…

One major impediment to progress is ‘the victim mentality’
All actions are immediately justified in terms of external environment
The victim identifies the external stimulus as the ultimate cause of their actions and takes no responsibility for their choices in the scenario
True, some situations evoke empathy, sympathy
But sympathy is little more than pain relief when it does not empower the victim
Often enforced by parents who appear incapable of perceiving their child’s wrongs in the outside world – a mirror of their own relationship with the world – they sentence their children to be prisoners of their circumstance
From students, used to rhetorical argument and justification, statements are fired in defence but rarely these words are built from a consistent position, purely emotive responses facing up against an, at times ruthless, dialectic deconstruction of their positions. They are left confronted with their own contradiction and little choice but to concede their error… right lets move on and don’t do it again… do you call me an intellectual bully or a teacher?

There are some things I am prepared not to tolerate.

But the construction of a rational path from where the kids are to where I think they should go takes time and with some it would be a waste of energy… some will not be touched with reason in what time there is available and so… ding, ding – start salivating… or more like there is the flash of light – cower in expectation of the electric shock. Reasons are still given but it will be the fear of immediate consequence that change the behaviour. We are going to be looking at how you behave in every lesson.

But back to the experience of time
So often the kids have done something that was stupid and they know it
Why?
No answer
Or ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’
Time and cause and effect
Life in the moment unconcerned about other moments
The juvenile state of innocence
Loss of innocence
The maturing process must incorporate a development of the conception, and thus experience, of time
Without it cause and effect do not exist, each moment a single point of emotional experience independent of proceeding and following moments.
And that is what I see in some kids, some all the time
Ah yes, the same old mystical theme
Experience of life in the moment
Is it or is it not an experience of eternity?
Duality and non-duality of space and time
The fruit of knowledge dragging us out of Eden
The fortunate learn how to move in and out at will
Will? – Lets talk about that and its origin, perhaps even it relationship to the victim mentality, slave morality, another day… the incompatibility of (individual) will with non-duality…
None of this rejection of the fruits of this life!
These are not thoughts of a member of a pessimistic religion, east or west.
That fire WILL never be put out – although it may be taken from some.

The experience and knowledge of time
How is it learned?
A knowledge of different timescales might help; geological can bee seen in the landscape and is very accessible, cosmic blows the mind, historical married to the life cycle of an ancient tree in north America – ‘this was a seedling while the pyramids were being built’, the life cycle of bacteria, a mayfly who only lives as an adult for a few hours… is there a culture that does not convey a conception of time through their mythology?
What of that conception?
Cyclic or linier…

Empathy and compassion
Those emotional states that forge links between different points in space and time
Sympathy makes rationality a uniting and not divisive force
Take us back to Eden
With a knowledge of time

There are a lot of holes here
Do you remember what has taught you about time?