I can't help but shudder at some of the charming things Y9 students say. Of course, I remember being a teenager and saying some pretty insensitive things myself, but as a mostly growed-up adult I find some comments hard to take. Young teenagers have such a black-and-white view of the world, of morality, of right and wrong. We were reading a newspaper article about a 362 kilo man being evicted, and having to have a forklift drag his bed up onto a flat-bed lorry, since the man couldn't walk (or fit into an ambulance, presumably). The general attitude seemed to be one of condemntation - that it was all the man's fault, and that he brought it on himself by eating too much. Which may be true, but I still think it's a bit rough to say that he ought to have been dumped on the footpath, rather than taken to hospital. Most students had zero sympathy, and zero desire to understand the situation (beyond a curiousity about how much the man ate to get that big).
There were of course several students whose response was more sophisticated - and surprise surprise they were the better behaved students in class. I'm not sure that the average Y9 student really understands that teachers and people on TV are people, outside of the role they are portrayed in. Those cogs just aren't turning yet for some of them.
It did all lead to an interesting discussion about liposuction, which captivated a little more interest than yesterday's chat about hydrocephalus.
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