1. Had my first week teaching (only two days a week, thank goodness), and it went pretty well! I’m fortunate that these generally seem to be good, well-behaved kids, even the 7/8 graders, and I’m doing my best to keep them engaged and getting them thinking (teenagers get some odd ideas). So far the main obstacle is just finding enough material to talk about on their level to fill a whole class, and I think that’s more just my getting used to prepping and its’ being the start of the year where they haven’t read a whole lot yet.

2. Something I brought their attention to in US History: Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519, where the whole continent was pagan. By 1548 and the time of the deaths of St. Juan Diego and Bishop Zumarraga, there were 9 million, all but a few hundred thousand coming after 1531 and the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadaloupe (though 200,000 conversions in ten years is nothing to scoff at). That would be roughly like the US becoming majority Catholic between 1994 and the present.

3. It is exhausting though. I’m the type who gets drained by social interaction, and being ‘on’ for six hours straight is rough. I suppose I’ll get used to it, but for now I’m really, really glad I only work two days a week.

4. I realized something this week: what bothers me about our typical way of talking about cultural or social issues is that we tend to frame it in terms of ‘the system’ and say things like “these people benefit from the system, which is why they allow it to continue.”

In the first place, this is a variant of Bulverism: “You think that because…” e.g. “You only believe in private property because you’re wealthy,” or “You believe in gender roles because you’re a man.” Moving the discussion from the question itself to the other person.

Also, what are you suggesting? That we try to devise a system no one benefits from?

5. But more irksome still is that I realized that this actually deflects the moral question by talking about how the system is to blame, rather than how this person is acting with inhumanity. Like, if we talk about how a given rich man abuses his servants and harasses his maids, trying to make it about how bad the class-system is ends up reducing the problem with this particular man’s behavior. It almost suggests that one couldn’t expect anything else; that there is no proper, moral behavior for a master because he’s in a fundamentally immoral position.

This strikes me as an irrational, childish approach: a matter of off-loading someone’s moral failing on your own ancestors.

Because, of course, this guy didn’t create this system, nor does he, as an individual, have much scope for changing it. On the other hand, obviously it’s possible to treat servants with justice and humanity within your own personal sphere, so failure to do that is the real issue.

This is one reason why our talk of these matters is usually so muddled and absurd; we’re shifting the focus from a man’s own scope of activity to something beyond the scope of any individual (collectivizing morality, one could say).

6. One thing I was talking with my students about is why the olive tree is a symbol of peace: because it takes an olive tree a long time to grow and mature, meaning that if you have an olive crop, it means you’ve been there in relative peace (e.g. without anyone raiding your crops) for a significant amount of time.

When it comes to symbolism:

The reasoning may vary
But is rarely arbitrary

7. And we have another review by the indispensable Caroline Furlong, this one of The Walk Home and Other Tales of Suspense. Go check it out and then peruse her blog and books while you’re at it.