Tonight I was tutoring A. We are in a mad rush of five sessions this week to prepare him for his exam on Monday. Yesterday we reviewed the story of Ashputtle, a strange story because it's the original Cinderella (you can see why the folks at Disney changed her name), and therefore strikes the students (and me) as infantile and uninteresting.
Tonight we reviewed the excerpt that his class read of "The Titanic". After plotting the story's events and characters on a worksheet, discussing the role of suspense in the story, and the possible themes ("build enough lifeboats" is what he wrote on the paper) A said:
"Do you think the Titanic was the most important event in the world?"
I answered in the negative, and he asked why. I thought of the book "The 100", which identifies the 100 most influential people in the world. The introduction of that book, (which I read one day in Powell Books in Portland, OR), between its efforts to preemtively dodge inevitable criticism for its impossible (but fascinating) project, clarifies that the author considers an event's importance in terms of how significantly life on earth changed after that person lived.
The apostle Paul is on the list, because after his life, so many people converted to the new religion which would change the face of civilisation. Louis Pasteur is on the list, since after his discovery of how to make milk safer to drink, nutrition changed.
In position number 1 is the prophet Mohammad.
I started saying to A that there had been other events that had had a bigger impact on the world. Perhaps after the Titanic sank there were fewer people, and ship builders started making sure that they had enough life boats for all passengers on board. "But think about other events, like the birth of the prophet Mohammad." (He didn't know the word prophet, so it took us a while to establish which of the billion Mohammad's I was referring to.)
"So many people's lives were changed by the Prophet's life, right?"
"Yeah." He looked engaged and nodded through my whole discussion of what made an event important. I used another example, in which my phone broke. That wasn't going to change the way we live here on earth. But there are such events.
At the end, I said, "Does that make sense?" and he said:
"Yeah. So, if the prophet Mohammad hadn't been born, the Titanic wouldn't have hit the ice berg?"
Earlier in the day, I had been reading The Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer, which is one of the books assigned for the MAT program I'm starting in June. The chapter I read today spoke of the importance of mentor teachers. Thus I had already made a list today of Monica's traits that I found admirable and aspired to. Here was an opportunity to practice "never making fun of or laughing at a child", which figured high on the list, right below "patience".
I tried to look contemplative for a moment, then said, "Well, I wouldn't say that. But I would say that the Prophet's birth had more impact on earth than the tragedy of the Titanic." He nodded, satisfied, pride intact.
On the way home from tutoring, the taxi, which usually plays Arabic pop, had this intriguing and insufferable track blaring:
Tonight we reviewed the excerpt that his class read of "The Titanic". After plotting the story's events and characters on a worksheet, discussing the role of suspense in the story, and the possible themes ("build enough lifeboats" is what he wrote on the paper) A said:
"Do you think the Titanic was the most important event in the world?"
I answered in the negative, and he asked why. I thought of the book "The 100", which identifies the 100 most influential people in the world. The introduction of that book, (which I read one day in Powell Books in Portland, OR), between its efforts to preemtively dodge inevitable criticism for its impossible (but fascinating) project, clarifies that the author considers an event's importance in terms of how significantly life on earth changed after that person lived.
The apostle Paul is on the list, because after his life, so many people converted to the new religion which would change the face of civilisation. Louis Pasteur is on the list, since after his discovery of how to make milk safer to drink, nutrition changed.
In position number 1 is the prophet Mohammad.
I started saying to A that there had been other events that had had a bigger impact on the world. Perhaps after the Titanic sank there were fewer people, and ship builders started making sure that they had enough life boats for all passengers on board. "But think about other events, like the birth of the prophet Mohammad." (He didn't know the word prophet, so it took us a while to establish which of the billion Mohammad's I was referring to.)
"So many people's lives were changed by the Prophet's life, right?"
"Yeah." He looked engaged and nodded through my whole discussion of what made an event important. I used another example, in which my phone broke. That wasn't going to change the way we live here on earth. But there are such events.
At the end, I said, "Does that make sense?" and he said:
"Yeah. So, if the prophet Mohammad hadn't been born, the Titanic wouldn't have hit the ice berg?"
Earlier in the day, I had been reading The Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer, which is one of the books assigned for the MAT program I'm starting in June. The chapter I read today spoke of the importance of mentor teachers. Thus I had already made a list today of Monica's traits that I found admirable and aspired to. Here was an opportunity to practice "never making fun of or laughing at a child", which figured high on the list, right below "patience".
I tried to look contemplative for a moment, then said, "Well, I wouldn't say that. But I would say that the Prophet's birth had more impact on earth than the tragedy of the Titanic." He nodded, satisfied, pride intact.
On the way home from tutoring, the taxi, which usually plays Arabic pop, had this intriguing and insufferable track blaring:
I wondered if the driver were trying to humour me, because I have short hair, or whether he is French-Arab. I didn't ask, but smiled the whole way home.
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