Tales from the Prior, continued….I was driving Tristan to school Monday and saw two kids, around 10 or 11, I’d say, walking on the sidewalk. A boy and a girl, and by the looks of them, brother and sister. They were arguing heatedly, and just as I drove past, the boy turned and punched the girl, hard, in the face. I couldn’t believe it. It was enough to snap her head back and make her stagger backward–a very serious punch. So I slow down and stop and see her recover enough to start flailing (ineffectually) back at him. Vroom Reverse. I back up and roll down the window and tell them I saw what happened and that hitting is no way to solve problems. Did it solve your problem??? You still look mad at each other to me. So they look at each other and then, to my huge disappointment, the girl says “He didn’t hit me”. I could have cried. I said “I SAW him punch you, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a black eye from it. How can you say that?!? If you were older you could go to jail for hitting someone like that!” Anyway, long story short, it makes me wonder why we don’t teach kids in schools better strategies for resolving conflicts. We clearly can’t rely on parents to do it. That little scene I witnessed was a re-enactment of a million adult domestic disturbances, and the cycle won’t be broken without some intervention. Suppose in grade 4, say, they took the 40 hours of class time they spend learning about medieval castles and they spend it instead on teaching non-violence. And instead of parents spending the weekend constructing a model of a medieval castle that the kid is supposed to be building, the parents have homework, too. They have to role-play with their kids some scenes of conflict and come up with different ways of resolving it. Report due Monday. I’m serious. I can’t believe we don’t teach people how to be human beings when it is so clearly essential to do so.