Having decided that abstract reasoning was unlikely to help, the school teacher literally showed the children on her fingers what happens when they offend their peers. More precisely, not on fingers, but on apples.
Pain that is not visible. How to explain to children what happens? After all, when you hit a person, he cries, he has a bruise, blood – in general, the consequences are immediately visible. What if you hurt someone with a word? No bruising, no abrasion. The words “you hurt me”, “you hurt me” are just words.
Realizing that all these abstract arguments that words also hurt, do not work very well, one ordinary American teacher decided to resort to a visual example and explain everything to children literally on her fingers. The woman told about what she did on a social network. The success was deafening: 240 thousand shares, 200 thousand likes, 25 thousand comments. And we decided to share her story with you.
“Today in class I decided to introduce the children to apples. They were perfect – red, juicy. The apples looked exactly the same both in size and shape.
– The same? Absolutely, – the children and I decided.
And then I took one apple and told the children how I didn’t like it.
– I think it is disgusting. The color is terrible, and the stalk is too short, – and threw the apple on the floor.
The children, of course, looked at me as if I was insane. But you can’t argue against the teacher’s authority.
– I don’t like this apple. I want you not to like it either. Tell us why you do not like him, – and gave the apple to the class.
The task turned out to be quite simple. Children are inventive people. They found a lot of reasons to hate the apple. “Smelly apple, I hate you”, “Why did they buy you at all”, “You must be wormy.” And each time they threw the unfortunate apple on the floor. I even felt sorry for him.
So, everyone insulted the apple, and it returned to its brother on the table. And it was the turn of the second apple. We didn’t throw him on the floor. On the contrary, everyone stroked it and said how wonderful it is: “What a smooth skin”, “Such a beautiful color”, “I love apples”.
And again the apple returned to the table. It was impossible to tell which one was thrown on the floor and which one was praised. One could only feel the difference by touch: soft spots appeared under the skin on the “offended” apple.
And then came the final part of the experiment. I cut both apples. One of them was bright white inside, strong, crispy even in appearance. The second is in brown spots, completely unsympathetic. It was immediately clear which of them was beaten and offended. After all, there are bruises and abrasions on it – they just are not visible from the outside. But inside it was badly damaged.
This made a very powerful impression on the children. They understood what happens inside each of us when we are offended. But many of them did not even know how much suffering hurtful words can cause.
And then the results of the experiment were consolidated – with practice, as it should be.
– I told how I was offended last week. She said that she didn’t show how unpleasant I was that I was smiling, but in fact it hurt me a lot, ”the teacher says.
Then the children themselves recalled various unpleasant incidents and grievances.
– We can teach children to understand that it is not normal – to hurt someone, to say hurtful things to each other. We can teach them to protect the weak, stop bullying. One girl did just that – she refused to offend the apple, – the woman said. – It is in our power to raise a generation of people who will be kinder than we are.