I’ve had a discussion with some boys today and they were complaining about things the school orders them to do, that their reasonings and arguments were not just being given a thought but being retaliated with threats of losing school colour entitlements.
I showed them pity for a split second. I had some other thing in mind. I challenged them to try solve the issues with me playing the role of the school administrator (admin). The following is the write up of what probably took place:
Admin wants them to do something.
They refuse, giving some lame excuses as an argument. They probably deserved a slap or two. There they are in front of the admin whose time’s is very important, giving lame excuses without even thinking it throughly as if words comes out from anywhere else except the brain. If they don’t even bother to spend some time coming up with a good argument, why should the admin be even bothered about giving time for them? There’s no need for the admins to give it a thought as its not worth a thought.
Admin remains adamant and gives back a lame excuse at split second to counter their lame excuse.
They were stunned hearing the lame excuse and started blurting out any arguments that they could think of at that time. Well at least this time they did use their brain, but still not effectively, and probably at a wrong timing. They should do their ‘homework’ before the ‘battle’.
Admin had them tasting back their own poison, retaliating any arguments that the admin could think of at that time. The admin’s arguments weren’t necessarily solid, but it was enough to throw them off guard as well. An eye-for-an-eye, a flimsy argument that had not been given some time to be thought through clearly been thrown off by another similar flimsy argument due to the time constraint.
They were devastated seeing defeat pushing against them to the edge of their wits. In a last act to salvage whatever egos thats left, they left the ‘battle’ with the victor winning a comfortable battle. At least they did something thats right, to continue arguing their way through without being well prepared would just be testing the admin’s patience and it does not bodes well to a good working relationship in the future.
The above scenario could had been so much more pleasant if they did their ‘homework’.
Yet, the above was just me playacting the admin. What they got was the “restart button” where they could go through the real ‘battle’ with the real ‘admin’ armed with better ‘weapons’ now that they knew their own weaknesses and of the enemy, making good use of Sun Tzu’s Art of War – “know yourself, know your enemy, you wont be defeated in a 100 battles”
