My 13 year old was rumbled today for mucking around during a speech in assembly and given a detention (chiz). Nowadays kids are required to sign a confession, usually dictated by a teacher, and parents are required to countersign. In these documents the word inappropriate is sure to occur. I duly signed, after adding a note that his behaviour had been, in fact, ‘discourteous’.
As one who has done more than his share of mucking around I tend to take these things lightly. But the lad wanted to know why the amendment and once I explained (courtesy is necessary because we are bored and protects us in our turn when we bore others) he announced that he now felt bad about what he’d done. Welcome to the moral life, kid. It’s what they don’t teach you at school.
‘Inappropriate’ is to teachers what ‘life style’ is to those who work in public health. Consider the words of a professor of medicine writing in the current issue of Monash Magazine.
The combination of immunology and stem cells ‘as body repair kits’ will provide patients with ‘non-rejected’ treatments for many if not all degenerative diseases caused by poor life style selection such as smoking and diet . . .
A lot to think about there. I particularly like ‘non-rejected’, as in ‘non-dead’.