[This blog entry comes from an assignment in my Restructuring Urban Schools class — the assignment was this: Write a three page paper describing your ideal urban school. This is my take on the assignment. Remember — I only had three pages, so there’s a lot missing here, I think.]
Within these walls, we are governed by the laws of loving-kindness. In college, I had a professor who started his class with this statement. He knew he couldnt control the way people treated one another in the outside world, but within his class, he asked us all to live by the tenets of loving-kindness. This was not a course I wanted to take it was a required course of the English department for all English majors. But in the end, I looked forward to his class every day and I was very sad when it ended. Why? Upon reflection, it was because there was a community of learning in that room that was a pleasure to be there. I wanted to learn in that classroom, because there was a community there that was conductive to learning. My ideal school is one that is structured based on the inter-related ethical values of loving-kindness and democracy.
