Anecdote for Educators

O dearest, dearest boy! my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn.

-- W. Wordsworth

Ah, Wordsworth. What were you thinking? Much as you love your son and children in general, I cannot say the same.

I was teaching my tuition class as per usual on Saturday when I encountered my first crying new student who refused to enter my den. As expected, my class wanted to know why I kept disappearing outside after they'd caught wind of a rumour that they would be having a new classmate and they all trooped outside to gawk as me and L attempted to persuade her to join the class.

Attempt #first and last went down like a lead balloon.
I had gotten the class to all give her a very warm welcome by simulataneously saying hello and waving as she walked in, but all she did was shrink back. (mouse! mouse!)
Shit! Shit! I mentally cursed and went back outside to try and placate her while being tailed by multiple monkeys.

L suggested that I go back and try and teach something because I did afterall, have 9 other kiddies to supervise and I agreed. Back in the classroom, no, den, I was faced with wretched hobbit-height terrors running amok. "Teacher, teacher!" some of them shouted. (And for pity's sake, I am not Miss Long) "Why is she crying?"

"Well, she's scared because this is the first time she's gone to tuition." I replied. Most of them scoffed at this. "I wasn't scared," they said. Sure. Loud and noisy beings like you would have happily reduced your first classroom to debris. "Well," I persisted, "didn't you feel scared on the first day of school?" "Noooooooooo!" was their delighted reply. "I even made friends on my first day," someone added proudly, and which was followed by a dozen more incoherent accounts of first days. Ok. "Okay, okay!" I cried above the excited horde. "But if you saw someone who was scared, would you help them?"

"Noooooooooo!" came the second delighted answer.
Oh gee.

The boys in particular, except for one who openly declared he liked them and got roundly teased and maybe two, dislike fairytales. Is that somehow connected to why their moral compass is as screwed up as it is? Or maybe it's their fey-like amorality that J.M. Barrie more rightly captured? But that, is a musing for another day.