When I taught boys, roughly 45% of what I taught wasn’t related to the curriculum. Rather, much of my lessons were spent on the ‘invisible curriculum’: social skills, tempering impulsivity, helping students develop study habits and persistence, and negotiating troubling social situations.
An intensely difficult job for any adult is to explain to very upset children the difference between bullying and the logical consequences of unpleasant behaviour. (Actually, I think that comprised about 80% of my grade five drama classes.) Developmentally, it takes a reasonable amount of life experience to acknowledge and be able to process the reality that one’s inappropriate or harmful behaviour and treatment of others – though unintended – can be a factor in how one is received by others. Some children aren’t ready for it until they’re ten, eleven, or even into their later teens. Some people (e.g. your beloved, benevolent blogger herself truly) don’t learn it until their twenties. But eventually, most people get it.
So when I see that kind of hand-wringing and social ineptitude by older adults, I feel… confused? Annoyed? Unimpressed – that’s what I feel! And obviously, it’s a huge mainstay of the alt-med pseudoscience scene, where anyone who has even so much as looked at an arnica bottle fondly must leap to the eternally butthurt defence of their beloved sugar tablets from rational challenge.
So pour yourself a cup of tea (milk in first, peons!), because The Lady Miss Unwholesome’s Finishing School for Indecorous Wayward Girls is about to commence.
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