The fourth and final quarter has begun at the American School of Douala. In the first two quarters, my class and I spent the first ten minutes of every class reading a book that was not assigned for class. The goal was to encourage reading outside of class, bring down higher energy levels after gym classes and get our minds focused on the tasks at hand. For the next two quarters, this practice has been replaced by ten minutes of writing. This practice will bring down energy levels and set our minds to task, but it is also an opportunity to experiment with our creative sides. Students are free to write about anything they want or interpret the prompt in any medium they wish – the prompts are only for those who need inspiration.
I write the same prompts with my students in all three of the classes we practice this activity – teachers should always be willing to do what they ask of students. Below are the prompts from this past week and my favorite of the three responses I wrote with my classes. All prompts were written by myself.
The picture at the top of this post was taken by our apartment’s pool this past weekend. It’s a hard life here in Cameroon.
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Monday 18 April
No school today – the last day of Spring Break!
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Tuesday 19 April
Describe the feeling of having to resume a task after a long break from working on it. Do you think the break helps you focus on work? Or dos the break make it more difficult to focus on the work you have to do?
I’m the kind of person who has to finish what he starts – and I obsess over that project until it’s done. I don’t like taking break when there’s still more work to do. Now, when I finish up a large project, I like to break hard. This past Spring Break had the latter feeling. The stretch from Christmas to Spring Break was difficult for a number of reasons, and I needed an escape from it all. I was smart, and took care of the responsibilities that would require my immediate attention upon my return before I started my hike, so there wasn’t any stress when I got back. In the past, when I left a project before finishing it, I couldn’t relax at all.
I have an issue being idle, and I like to use my time productively. I’ve always been like this. When I finally burn out, I crash, and generally avoid sobriety during those windows of time. As I’ve gotten older I’ve seen both ends of that cycle become less extreme and now manage both of those highs and lows without issue. Life gets easier.
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Wednesday 20 April
There is no such thing as true equality. Comment.
Equality is, to my uneducated understanding, a foundational principle in mathematics. To say that “2 + 2 = 4” doesn’t make sense is to discredit the principles that built the computer I’m using, that designed the building I’m working inside of, that explain the spinning of the planet we all live on. Hmm…. strange start….
Equality as a principle must exist, but the application of it to human affairs is baseline impossible. There are so many questions that only seem to have bad answers; Who determines who gets what? What do they get, and where do they get it from? What if they don’t want it? And beyond these questions, any imagination of a perfectly equal society immediately produces dystopian imagery. Humans and our material world cannot exist in a state of “true equality.”
Still, the disconnect between our logical acceptance of equality (in principle) and our equally logical refusal to apply it materially to human affairs always has and always will create tension. If we must resolve the contradiction, we must ask ourselves which is easier: man or math?
Equality has so many applications and appendages that it is impossible not to consider while reaching a moral judgement, but maybe there are other aspects to moral decision-making that are more relevant. Peace, and its promulgation, may deserve a greater consideration than an equal outcome. Honesty, integrity, sustainability and legacy or precedent are all valuable considerations as well. We should consider each or observe each social arrangement, on their own merits.
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Thursday 21 April
Describe the feeling of having someone you care about lie to you.
I’d rather not.
Dishonesty is a psychological meat grinder. Our thoughts are sung in language, and that language relies on definitions and references that we gather from our environment. In society, our environment includes other people. We place our trust, and thus our internally sung languages, in the hands of flawed humans as easily as we trust the impact of a car crash or the richness of morning coffee. Car crashes and morning coffee don’t lie to us, though. Their definitions, and their impact on our languages, are relatively fixed.
Dishonesty creates unfixed impacts. Something that we understand to be certain, that is taken for granted, is ripped open. Previously sound definitions lose relevancy. Hypothetical constructions become tricky without their given premises. Dishonesty creates unavoidable gaps in our languages and our universes; if we deliver dishonesty onto another, we rend those foundations and scar another for life, and if dishonesty is delivered upon us, we struggle to find flotsam that can prop up what makes sense. The world is already trying to kill us, and we make it easier by removing the support pillars that allow us to make sense of anything.
Never lie.
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Friday 22 April
What is more important: security or freedom?
When I was the age of my students, this would have been an obvious answer” freedom. What is the purpose of a safe life without choice. We may as well be in a maximum-security prison.
I’ve since learned of the sheer weight of privilege behind that knee-jerk response – my maleness gives me the freedom to walk alone at night, my whiteness gives my second chances not dreamed of by most, my wealth gives me a range of choices unavailable to many. On these grounds, the question of security or freedom becomes a litmus test of self-awareness.
I am self-aware now, if imperfectly, and I can see the value of security – safety, predictability, contingency even autonomy – as necessary for the value of freedom. If we are not safe to make a choice, then do we really make a choice at all? Freedom without security is impossible.
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certification 
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