We three Kings

In college I had a professor who had previously taught middle schoolers and still hadn't forfeited her condescension towards those she taught -ironically given that her subject was Child Development with all its emphasis on teaching strategies that are 'developmentally appropriate'. But who am I to say we are ever too old to be talked to like children? It's only that I want to spare children themselves of this humiliation while they still have the chance to avoid the possibility that their schooling might be a game designed by men who sat around deciding the average age at which they should be able to know the sameness in containment between a tall skinny glass and a fat short one. Despite her own inability to meet us in a place where we weren't being handed diapers to hold our poopy factoids, this professor did manage to pare her subject down to one take-away nugget, which is always the mark of a class I should have CLEP'd out of. It's the nature of the nurture, kids, and it doesn't have to stop. Therefore, I won't be roofie'ing Christian Bale just to propagate some higher-grade being, because the extra edge would soon be worn down by inadvertently allowing my child to watch Spongebob marathons and snack on paint chips. On the other hand, and even my professor would agree, it seems there's a lot of wasted energy going into trying to over-nurture children, with gourmet pre-schools and in-utero Mozart, when the most meaningful development comes from allowing the brain to begin negotiating its environment with increasing capability. I'm glad our parents didn't get in our way when we were little beasts exploring our domain. And like my professor, I still see us as children, pouring the water back and forth between the two glasses in wonder.