This is a TEDx Talk that I delivered in April of 2016 at The Country School in Madison, CT. The conference was run almost exclusively by the students of the school, who were of middle and high school age.
It's a variation of a talk that I have delivered before about the idea that teachers should be speaking less in their classrooms and expecting more from their students.
I was listening to a boy read a poem onstage at the recent TEDx conference at The Country School. It was a poem that talked about his fears and anxieties.
He read:
"I worry that the world will end in my lifetime."
I heard those words and remembered thinking the same thing for a long, long time.
Then I had kids, and that worry suddenly stretched out a whole lot longer. Practically endless.
Part of me wanted to grab the kid and warn him of the dangers of having children. They bring so much joy into my life and I can't imagine a world without them, but the threat of worldwide calamity looms larger and is decidedly more ominous.
