Planning for Planting

During these shortest of days, it is the time that some begin to think about new Springs, new beginnings, new opportunities once the insanity passes.

I offer these mild bromides to all policy and curriculum writers, whether middle school or middle life ones:

10 Sane Bromides With Implications for Educational Renewal

• There should be no single path to learning or living. Diversity and adaptability in biological and social worlds are key to survival.
• The strength of a democracy can be gauged by the levels of participation and the continuing sustenance by its constituents.
  
• Economic success without personal happiness is misery; personal happiness without economic well-being is a myth.
  
• Real freedom is composed of equal proportions of liberty and responsibility.
• The greatest threat to freedom is a shortage of trust. As trust recedes, policing moves forward.
• Civilization requires both conservation and growth. Too much of either is the source of all moral and intellectual ill health.
  
• Leadership, in the classroom or the boardroom, requires equal proportions of support and challenge. Support without challenge breeds complacency and false competence. Challenge without support breeds intimidation and withdrawal.
  
• The offering of opinion is an eliminative act and serves a purgative purpose. Understanding, on the other hand, is the metabolic act that sustains human organizations.
• Ethical caring occurs at the intersection of cool reason and warm compassion.
  
• Play that is neither therapeutic nor constructive is never fun.