During our lunch break today a couple of my colleagues and I were discussing the way some students fail to value the opportunities afforded them to gain an education. So often it seems that some give up without even trying to put forth even a modicum of effort. It can be somewhat disheartening at times.
One teacher said that when she was teaching high school she used to show them a clip from the movie Ever After.
" If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners corrupted from infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded, sire, but that you first make thieves and then punish them? "
She made the point to her students that by giving students the chance to gain an education in their youth the people who support their schooling "buy in" to the philosophy of the Cinderella character in this clip. That the purpose of an education is to open up previously unknown opportunities and possibilities. And, that by investing in their future now they are hoping to avoid the "mak[ing] of thieves [just to] punish them."
I thought it was an interesting comparison to make.
