Ideally, students learn to work and live beside other people.
We all arrive with our own agendas, like Mr. Mouth on yesterday’s M1 bus. The lower Manhattan subways had shut off after a Con Edison explosion in their plant at 15th and Avenue C. We had been touring the Brooklyn Navy Yard with Dan. After he showed us his office, he took us to Grimaldi’s Pizzeria on Fulton Street, just a block from the East River. The ample tour of a spacious work environment preceded a wonderfully flavorful meal at a no-nonsense, friendly neighborhood restaurant with a well-deserved reputation. After lunch we ate ice cream down by the docks. The metal railing displayed a passage from one of Whitman’s poems. He loved Brooklyn and NYC. He saw most people as his companions and co-workers. He empathized with common workers. The man on the M1, however, provides a sharp contrast. Although all of us on Church Street heading north from City Hall were either flagging cabs or watching for buses, he somehow felt, once the bus did arrive, that his need to board the bus outweighed everyone else’s. Although the bus stopped ahead of his spot, he pushed past others as he reprimanded the driver for not stopping in front of him. Once on the bus, he never stopped voicing his anger, suspicion or insults at strangers. Sometimes teenagers, like all of us, have the potential to act this way. They, we, need to learn Whitman’s empathy. He loved to ride the Fulton Street Ferry to be with the other travelers.
July 2002
No comments:
Post a Comment