thy life's a miracle

In the middle of these commentaries about the ruin of edu, I want to comment very briefly on the death of a Beverly Hills High Junior on December 3rd 2006. The male student, so the story goes, got into a car with a very drunk, older male driver in order to look after two female sophmores, who wanted the driver to purchase them alcohol. All of them were inebriated to begin with, and this young man's gallantry had, to say the least, a catastrophic outcome. It is at this point unknown which, if either, of the young women survived, nor do i know whether the driver lived or not.

I will dispense with the usual cautions against taking drugs and operating machinery.

I hope that whoever reads this will think twice and three times about the value of their own lives -- which is, to put it mildly, considerable. In the end all debates are futile if you aren't alive to engage in them, and I hope you'll stick around to be a part of the fray. Being a young person is actually dreadfully difficult (this is Robert Gross' observation), much more difficult, i think, than being an older person. And yet, your charge as a young person is to survive into adulthood, so that you can bring your vitality, your uncertainy, and even your suffering into the realms of work, politics, love, art, and of course education.

Do remember, not only do you need to live, but more importantly, we, the older ones, we need you. I have felt this many times as a teacher and I continue to feel it as a writer and as a parent and as an older person with much younger friends. Young people are actually crucial to the world -- not in the sense of being "the future" or the "hope" or whatever -- but in the sense of who you are right NOW, with all your questions, and discomfort, and your incredible aliveness.

i'm sorry you do not have an educational community or set of communities that serves you better. But in the end, still, you need to live. Everything else is ultimately negotiatable.

So please stick around, and take care of yourself so that you can live as long as humanly possible.