Atropus, Lachesis and Clotho

School is a breeding ground for philosophy. My school is a somewhat rundown big brick building, built in the era when people believed that there were always going to be levels of enrollment similar to the baby-boom generation; alas, the building is mostly empty now. It's an inner-city school, not the "Dangerous-Minds-gangs-metal detectors-police officers" type inner city school, although I did see two police officers there the other day, but that was the first time this year. Although I am sure that some of the students are gang members, it's not as rampant as it could be. Still, the students come from low-income families and don't care about education, which is what differentiates it from other schools where the problems are much different. Today, one of my students got beat up by another student, and as much as my heart bleeds for all my students, I did not post this to vent my bleeding heart (It's on my sleeve anyway, it gets enough air as it is).

So where does this take us? Those familiar with the title of this post (I must admit ignorance, and God bless the Internet for helping me find those three names) know that they are the names of the Fates in Greek mythology. The violent student is your typical violent kid whose father is in jail, mother not around (whether by bad parenting or other reason, I do not know) and he is currently living with another relative. Can this boy escape his fate? Is he doomed, whether by Destiny or genetics, to end up like his father?

I would like to believe not; I wouldn't be a teacher if I thought each had his lot and that was so. It drove me crazy to be surrounded by so many sots during my post-secondary education. They had no right to be there except by virtue of the fact that they had a supportive home environment and a good school. They were naturally expected to go to university, and so they did. For many though, it was a waste of time and money as these dimwits fooled around, drank like crazy, partied and flunked out. So many other students, with less supportive home environments, schools where the majority of the population isn't even expected to graduate, let alone go on to post-secondary education could have benefited from having what these students just threw away! (as a side note, you must keep in mind that I did my degree in Education. These are people who are educating the future. A comment from one student flunking out was, "I'm already in Education, where can I go from here?" as if this program was the bottom of the barrel.) But still, there are some who manage to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" as the saying goes, and move on despite their beginnings.

My father always used to tell a story about 2 brothers that he knew. Their father was an abusive drunkard. One son grew up and became an abusive drunkard. He believed there was no other fate for him. The other grew up and refused to become like his father, and so did not. Anecdotal evidence aside, what is the point of this? If we say that the future is determined, we are setting ourselves up for failure. But if we say that the future is not determined, we neglect the difficulties that people face because of the situation that they are born into.