Kahlil Gibran   (via Wikimedia Commons) 

I know this post will be controversial. I’m jumping in anyway. What I am about to say needs to be said. Let the fertilizer hit the ventilators. I’m as ready as I'll ever be.

 We will only get to a world culture and thus raise the odds of our surviving, by and large in peace, if we purposely, actively teach a world culture to the kids coming up. Not the belief in a heroic lost cause, not the virtues of the British Empire, nor any other colonial empire, but not the so-called ancient wisdom of a belief system of any indigenous tribe or system of religion either. A world culture, taking bits from them all and offering new and creative ideas, aiming to produce citizens who look out from, and past, their parents' ways, not backward into them. Save what Moral Realism says is demonstrably worth saving for your species. Jettison the rest.  

Controversial? Hell, yeah. Politically incorrect. Yes. But necessary. If the path of building a world culture, where all are conversant with, and respectful of, the cultures of all, then yes, the re-education of humanity out of its tribalistic ways is going to take a long time and a lot of work. Hard? You bet. But if you think the cost of education is hard, you should contemplate the cost of ignorance. World climate catastrophe. A few million survivors living underground for ten generations. Or a bloom of mushroom clouds over the earth. The end of civilization in an afternoon. Neither of these scenarios springs out of my overactive imagination. They are only what climate scientists and nuclear scientists have described for eight decades. 

We won't ward off those outcomes by wishful thinking or drifting and hoping. Our whole history says otherwise. What we would like to see happen, we must actively pursue. 

So I will say it again: I have to try.    

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A poem with a non-European author. Some questions for study and discussion by real students, led in class by a real teacher. Entirely plausible in the real world. I know. I've done these questions on this poem, in class, with real kids. 

On Children                (Kahlil Gibran)

 

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not            even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

1. To whom is this poem likely addressed? What lines in the poem tell you so?

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2. What is Gibran (the poet) saying to his intended audience about children? What lines in the poem tell you so?

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3. In what ways do parents “house” their children’s bodies?

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4. According to this poet, should parents try to make their children similar in thoughts and behavior to the parents themselves? What lines tell you so? Do you agree? Why or why not?

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5. Who is the “Archer”? Who or what are the “bows”? What real life advice is the poet giving when he says: “the Archer bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far”? Explain.

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6. If the poem is read aloud, what effect is produced in the listeners' minds if the reader emphasizes the second use of the word “your” in line 4? 

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7. Which of the four main kinds of sentences (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory) is: “Seek not to make them like you.” What effect does using this kind of sentence have on the tone of voice of the poem?

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8. In your opinion, is the poet’s advice to his intended audience good advice? Why do you think so? In your opinion, are there some cultures in which this advice would be generally considered wrong? Explain why you think so.

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