爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
But modern educators shy away from that which cannot be quantified. It’s doubtful whether we shall ever see the study of human nature on a school syllabus.
I read in the paper about a mother, whose son had been stabbed to death for the sake of his mobile phone. She was setting up a found-ation in the victim’s name to help rehabilitate delinquent youths of the kind who had killed her son. Blaming his death, not so much on the perpetrators as on the social system that had produced them: a system failing badly in its obligation towards young people in desperate need of discipline, care and control, she hoped the work of the foundation would benefit not only the inpiduals targeted but anyone ever to come in their way. She finished by saying that her heart went out to those parents who had to live with the knowledge that their own flesh and blood were guilty of such an act. In the local shop I found the article under discussion. “That mother must be a saint,” uttered one elderly customer. “If that had been me, I’d have campaigned to see them hanged.” “The strength of her!” sighed a young woman. “Isn’t it a wonder that she wasn’t broken altogether?” “Perhaps she came to the same conclusion as I did,” said the shop-keeper, herself a widow with seven children. “That, considering the world we live in, death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.” “One thing I can’t understand,” a politician once said to me, “is why one’s achievements are hardly ever in proportion to the time and energy spent on a project. Ventures I give my heart and soul to come to nothing, whereas others, to which I pay only scant attention, fall neatly into place.” It reminded me of advice given many years ago by one of my teachers at drama school. “Keep going to auditions,” she told the group of prospective actors. “Send out your details, pester producers. You may never get the parts you hope for, but in my experience, effort is always rewarded. An offer will come your way – though often from a direction you never anticipated.”
