I had a nice chuckle this week with one of my
classes that tends to make me laugh all the time. We were reading Wilfred
Owen's "Dulce et decorum est" in order to jump into our unit on the
effects of war. We read the poem aloud together. After the final lines,
"Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori" ("It is sweet and
fitting to die for one's country"), I
asked the entire class, "Who can tell me what that means?"
Though the translation was just underneath it, one of the students said,
"Well, we know what dulce means." I said,
"Really, what?" And several of them chimed in by stating very
confidently, "It's that drink you get at Starbucks." Of course,
they were talking about Starbucks' ever popular Dulce de Leche.
I shook my head, laughed out loud, and enjoyed the moment of pure
blissful ignorance on their part. I said, "Yes, I'm sure that Owen
was suggesting to his fellow soldiers that they get a latte at Starbucks before
heading back to the battlefield in World War I -- back then there was a
Starbucks at every trench." We laughed again.
Though these students have moments of brilliance,
they also have many moments of pure naiveté that actually make me love
them. This is probably because they can laugh at themselves when they
make these little blunders, and the nice part is that it doesn't keep them from
contributing to the discussion in the future. Some students would pack
their things and drop the class if they had an embarrassing moment like that,
but show me one person on this earth that hasn't said something "slightly
misguided" at some point. I say silly things all the time. So what?
We laugh and move on. In fact, it makes those moments of brilliance stand
out that much more.
