Thoughts

This week, my students are debating the following claim: It is acceptable to kill one innocent person in order to save the lives of more innocent people. There are several directions one could take with this claim, whether the position is in the affirmative or negative. I'll discuss just one about which I've been reading. Two schools of thought would differ fundamentally in this debate. On the one hand are utilitarians, who believe that what is moral is whatever produces the most good for the greatest number of people, or whatever produces the least amount of pain. For that reason, utilitarians would argue that if all persons were of equal value to society, it is moral to kill the one and save the others. On the other side are deontologists, who believe that what is moral is whatever action is loyal to a set of rules, or to duty. Not all deontologists believe in absolutes (as in it is always wrong to lie), but all believe that duty to principle should be the prime motive of the...

I face painted today. I think I left a few kids wondering why their painted butterflies were disabled, but that's okay. It was still fun. I was there as part of a team going to Haiti in early June. We arrived in our team shirts, helped to "hide" eggs (really just place them), and then broke off into our different jobs. It was, really, the largest egg hunt I have ever encountered. Thousands of eggs were placed in the middle of a large park next to the church that organized it. This, not two months on the heels of a report that Stockton, California, is the most miserable city in America. There are definitely some horrible things about this place, but there are also many people who work hard to make it a good place to live.

When I attended a leadership conference with my students a few weeks ago, we heard three motivational speakers, one of whom spoke to us about a young lady killed in the Columbine High School shootings twelve years ago (to the day, as a matter of fact; today is the twelfth anniversary of the killings). Her name was Rachel Scott, a girl with boundless enthusiasm and an unshaken confidence that her life would touch the lives of countless others. She was right. Her story (look up "Rachel's Story" on a search engine) involved a life devoted to caring about those whom no one else would, without regard for her own well-being. It has been heard by millions, and has galvanized students and adults to be more inclusive in their schools and generally to be more caring of others. It was powerful for another reason, however. As the speaker relayed Rachel's story, he spoke of several remarkable things that occurred before and after her death. Before the event, for instance, she ...

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship," said Thomas Aquinas, "he would keep it in port forever." So many of us, I have seen, do harbor our dreams in a port of inaction so that we never have to face our shortcomings or endure the pain of difficult work. There are those difficult moments in the pursuit of a dream when a person asks the all-important question: why. "Why am I doing this?" "Why should I continue if nothing is changing?" This question was easy enough to answer before starting; but hardship can cause a person to lose sight of why he or she thought to pursue the dream in the first place. Disillusionment sets in, especially if there is no apparent fruit coming from your labor (intellectual, spiritual, physical, etc.). In long-distance running, this is called "the wall," the moment when a runner feels as though there is no possible way to continue running. Runners know, however, that it is possible to break ...

We Christians put a lot of stock into our faith. Consider the following passage, meant for women: "Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight" (1 Peter 3:3-4). If asked which type of beauty is more important, many men and women would quickly agree with Peter that it is inner beauty. "This is the type of beauty that will last," they might say. When it comes to acting on that belief, however, it is much more difficult. Women might not want to let go of a fixation on their appearance, for fear that they will no longer be considered beautiful by men; while men may not truly want to consider looking beyond the outer beauty of a woman, whether because he believes the physical attraction wrought by physical beauty is the most important type of attractio...

If you had to name the problems that need to be solved most, what would it be? Many people would say world hunger is among the most pressing problems that need to be solved; and numerous people have indeed tried to solve it. In the 1960s, in fact, several specialists in science and agriculture (specifically, a communication specialist, an agronomist, a potato specialist, and two maize specialists) came together to address the hunger problem. What is amazing is that, even though we still have world hunger, the men involved in this project were able to increase grain production so much that the lead scientist (named Norman Borlaug) “has been credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.” How did they do it? They did it with genetic engineering. They saw that a certain type of grain would yield a lot of rice, wheat, or maize; but they also knew that these types of grains also fell over before harvest time because they became too tall. What the scientists did to solve this wa...

The fact that people believe differently has been the source of several conflicts in our history. Some of these have been fought over land, others over money. Some conflicts have even been fought in the name of ideas. One of these is known as the Thirty Years’ War, so named because it literally lasted for thirty years (1618-1648). In the early 1600's, in what was called the Holy Roman Empire, were two major faiths that were at odds with one another. On one side were the Catholics and on the other, the Protestants. The Catholics were alarmed that the Protestants were gaining too much land in the empire. The Protestants, on the other hand, were upset that the Catholics were converting some of their leaders. This tension eventually erupted when Protestants threw two officials of a Catholic ruler from a castle window. Although the men survived (they fell 70 feet), a thirty year-long war begun that ended with the deaths in Germany of maybe one-third of people in cities and two-thirds of...

Among the things that make someone reliable is an ability to remain steadfast in your beliefs and your actions, even in the face of fierce resistance. One man who did that was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was executed at age 39 in a concentration camp after having resisted the Nazi regime’s elevation of Hitler and its racism against Jews. His was among the few voices speaking and acting out against a largely popular Nazi government. After the Nazis created a set of laws (the Nuremberg laws) that officially recognized the Jews as “subjects” instead of citizens, Bonhoeffer resisted by joining a secret military intelligence organization whose goal was to undermine the Nazis; and by helping to smuggle fourteen Jews out of Germany. Although they were aware of his tendency to speak against them, the Nazis didn’t know how far he would go to stop them. He was aware of different plots on Hitler’s life, and believed it was fully necessary to assassinate the Fuhrer. This is what made Bonhoeff...

I played a game called "flugby" with my students last week, for two days. It's a game that combines soccer and rugby: you can kick the ball downfield, and you can catch the ball and run with it. What I noticed in the midst of these two games is that I'm slowing down. Maybe it was the fact that the first of the two days consisted of a full soccer-length match of one and one-half hours, or maybe it was because I'm now thirty-one and not as sprightly as I once was. Regardless of the cause, I'm starting to get older. I've been in my career for nearly five years, and have myself set up in a lifestyle that is nothing less than routine. There have been small changes here and there, but on the whole, I'm experiencing time faster than I was. It makes me think a little of how life is meant to be seen. In my mind, the ideal life is one in which youth, joined with strength and vigor, gives way to age, joined with wisdom and experience. That is, of course, the idea...

During our trip to the leadership conference over the weekend, my kids yelled out their motivation chant for the other delegates to hear. The problem is that the other kids liked it so much, they took it for themselves. They changed a few words and used it for themselves. My students did not like this, to say the least. What was needed, I thought, was a new song; so, I thought of this on the way to the Boardwalk. You would sing it to the music of Owl City's "Fireflies." Just don't judge me too harshly. It would be a seven or eight on the corny scale. Here it is. You would not believe your eyes If ten million students tried To light up the world of our fellow peeps. As they feel the love and care, They'd dream 'til we get them there. You'd think me rude, but I would just stand and stare. We like to help our friends achieve All their goals and only The things that make us unique We try to use for those who need And everything gets better than it seems...

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "You can not lead a battle if you think you look silly on a horse." I was the man Napoleon is describing. To a degree, I still am. As I've taught leadership this year, though, I've begun to understand that leadership-- like all relationships-- is like a dance. You have your moves, and they have theirs. If you're not dancing together, allowing your followers to shine in their own creativity by affirming and encouraging the ideas they have conceived, then the dance will be awkward and tense at best, and will lead to hurt toes and the end of your dance at worst. At the same time, there are moments when being a leader leads to unique situations, moments you would never experience as a general education classroom teacher. Some of these happened over the past three days. I took my students to a leadership conference in San Jose, and just want to tell one of the stories from the conference. Bankground: My fellow chaperone and I taped the doo...