 |
| Britain's Prince George accompanied by Britain's Prince William (L) arrives at his new school; where he has to pay 18k GBP / pa but he can't have a best friend!!! |
one of the most interesting weekend reads:on Aristotle, friendship and teaching.
"To want a best friend is both natural and good. That’s been noted ever since Aristotle wrote about what makes for a flourishing life in his Nicomachean Ethics. Friendship was central. He concluded that a person may have everything else that life can offer – money, family, purpose, values – but that they would feel they lacked something essential if they hadn’t, at some point, experienced the great joy of soulmateship.
He realised that human beings are social creatures. We’re people of the polis. We do well when we live well together. Friendship is a crucial part of that, he continued, because it’s in the context of intimate friendships that we best learn what it is to attend to others, not only ourselves. This care can become a habit that spills out in ever widening circles to extend across the community.
It is, therefore, wrong to think that forbidding best friends prevents playground bullying and loneliness. If anything, it could promote the opposite. How else can individuals learn the tremendous value of reaching out, of acting kindly?"
= = =
Thinking, now, of the wider picture, let's try to remember our school years: did we/you make any good friends then? probably yes! So, how bad/backward/[insert here any negative word you like] is a school that asks you not to make "best" friends?
Likewise to Mark Vermon, I do feel pity for Prince Goerge... He may be a Prince (on paper) but this does not mean that the royal etiquette will make his life easier...probably the opposite... :(
