Confidence building

Our common school pedagogy is at least subtly permeated by the idea that we must make children and adolescents cooperative, otherwise they might develop into egocentric and dangerous self-empires. I consider this to be a fallacy simply because children and adolescents cooperate from birth. Always! Young people can become a danger (to themselves and others) when they copy destructive patterns, over-cooperate for too long, or have to suppress their individuality in order to appear "correct" in the eyes of those who set boundary violations out of fear of unrest. The suffering endured by many students due to suppression often manifests in proxy conflicts both inside and outside our schools. And what about the students who absolutely do not want to read? What should happen to them? They don’t read. That is the current state. As a teacher, I...