More interesting than adults

CoI circle

I had written about what Community of Inquiry is and how we do it at our school. Well, after a long break due to my uni studies and holidays, the kids were … asking ‘are we doing it this Friday?’ So we did. Of course.

Today’s starting student-generated ‘question that your really have think about’ was: Why are drugs used so much?

From a ‘list of reason that really doesn’t end’ to ‘a general search for perfection but not to take to better future but to go back to better past’ to ‘excuse for weakness and making people selfish’ to ‘seeking unpredictability in a predictable life’ to ‘warping consciousness but like many other things that do that’ to ‘taking away the ability to make choices that you have when you are not high’ to ‘changing a person from humanity to primal instincts’ to wondering whether ‘schools make kids take drugs because of all the stress they create’ and then expanding to ‘society the schools are just a part of, is doing that’ and more … again, it was an incredible 40 minute ride at the end of a school week.

What keeps me so attracted to, fascinated by these sessions is not necessarily how deep, insightful, or perhaps technically or factually right or wrong they may be. I simply find that conversations, dialogues like this far easier to have with teens than adults. Any time a curly question like this arises in adult company, usually everyone simply demarcates and defends their turf. How boring! How un-enlightening!

For all the stories about their air-headedness and other ‘faults’, teens are an incredibly interesting people to listen to and talk with.

Try it.

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