Asking Why

Vita Sackville-West in the very entertaining Nursery Rhymes (1947 Dropmore Press) prefaces a section with the marginal rubric "Further Awkward Dialgoue" with this delightful bit:

Pity the pedagogue. It is indeed difficult to instruct the young. Arbitrary and ill-informed, they strike no happy mean between a bland acceptance and the inconvenient, unexpected challenge.

There follows a number of snippets of dialogue, most involving the charged question, "why." Very funny.

I used to have a motto: No 4 Y. Every now and then a "wherefore" slipped into my thinking — couldn't resist that metaphysical itch for an inkling into the purpose of what is the case. Ever a child.

And so for day 756
07.01.2009

No 4 Y

From How to talk so kids can learn — at home and in school by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

Especially unsettling to a child is the question that demands the answer to why he feels what he feels. The word "why" requires him to justify his feelings, to come up with a logical, acceptable reason for having them. Often he doesn't know the reason.

Seems like a word to reasonably proscribe from many an adult-to-adult conversation too.


And so for day 181
13.06.2007