Responsibility session 2

For more on this topic see Philosophy - Responsibility session 1.

Thu Nov 6

read Carrot Cake by Nonny Hogrogian

on Monday we looked at greater social responsibility, now we are going to consider what your responsibilities are to other people in a conversation

first we looked back at the story The Hermit and Harry and Me

was the hermit being mean to the little girl when he was ignoring her...

or was the little girl the one who was being mean because she wasn't leaving the hermit alone (and she was ignoring the little boy who did want to be her friend and kept trying to get her attention)?

do you have a responsibility to answer someone who is talking to you?

when you're talking to another person, do you have the responsibility to try to see things from their point of view?

AAR - I think it was the little girl because the hermit was making it pretty obvious that he just wanted some space

FR - I think it's a bit of both because she was still trying to be friends with him and be nice and she just kept on doing it, and he was just like whatever, I don't care

EO - I think it was the little girl and I think she should have known that he was a hermit and a hermit's whole deal is I just want to be on my own, and with her body language and the way she was acting she just didn't care

Z - she didn't respect his needs

AAR - it could also be the hermit because aren't hermits supposed to be nice, they are living out in nature and they're nice to everybody, he's being mean not explaining why he didn't want the girl to talk to him, he could have said, "can I please have some space right now? can you please not talk to me?"

is it irresponsible to leave everything and everyone and be a hermit?

can you just say that being with other people is just really hard and you don't want to do it anymore? or do you have some kind of obligation to society to stay and try to fix the things that you think are wrong?

Z - I think it's irresponsible because it's never going to get better if you just ignore it, it's only going to get better if you deal with it, like if there's mold in your refrigerator and you just ignore it, all of your food is going to go bad and the mold is only going to get worse and worse

then we turned our attention to the newlywed rabbit couple in Carrot Cake (this story is about the first fight between a young husband and wife as they struggle with how to have an honest conversation with each other)

"tell me what to say" was her strategy but what was her actual need? what need was behind that strategy?

AAR - her need was to be heard, because at the end she was like, "why don't you ask me about my life?" it was a need of being heard, a need of understanding

Z - I think that it's the husband's fault. he could have noticed that she didn't know what to say. he could have changed the subject and said, "do you like my work in the garden" or something

FR - I think it's also the husband's fault. he said "do you know anything else besides just that?" and then he went on and talked about himself and wasn't listening, wasn't seeing her needs, he was just going on about how he did this and he did that

EO - I think it was a little bit of both of their faults, one of the wife's needs was to matter, if I was her in that situtaion I would have said "I was about to say something" and when somebody just talks over me over and over, eventually you just say the shortest word possible. it's also the husband's fault because he didn't stop talking so she could also say something, or check and see if she was okay. it was just so awkward

From here we began working on a one-word definition of Responsibility. Marietta McCarty recommends doing this. It is interesting to see what definitions the children come up with. They seem to always begin their brainstorming by focusing on negatively slanted words:

job

weight

need

Marietta points out that you can show the children that Responsibilty has to do with Response. I respond because I can. You can also frame it as an act of caring. Responsibility can be a pleasure. A joy. An act of love. A promise.

The hermit saw conversation as a burden.

That's not the only way to look at responsibility.
You can use your talent to help people.

I respond because I am able. It's my way of giving and showing love for the world to respond.

We went back to our wordless pictures of responsibility from Session 1 and added our one-word definitions.

There's no word on my picture so you don't know how I feel about reponsibility. Now we can add the word.

They liked this new and more positive spin on Responsibility!

Z - it's my responsibility to be cheerful about my responsibility

FR - I think care goes with responsibility the most because you care for your body, you care for the rabbit, you care for cleaning your house

optional: let children share their wordless drawing and one word definition

Note: I mentioned as we were putting our Philosophy journals away that I thought it was interesting that Nonny Hogrogian titled her book "Carrot Cake" when there's almost nothing at all in it about cake until the very end when they go home and eat their cake in companionable silence. And Zac pointed out that the carrot cake is the resolution to the conflict. Of course!

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