About that one time I taught a Primary lesson inspired by Quentin Tarantino

FILM CRIT HULK is on my short list of “must read every article” blogs. A couple weeks ago he posted his inaugural article at Badass Digest, recounting a formative conversation he'd had with Quentin Tarantino, in which Tarantino told him, “Never hate a movie”. Go read that article and then come back here when you’re done. Or after you finish reading everything else HULK has written.

So for a couple weeks I’ve been thinking over the pointlessness of hating (yes, I did just use that as an intransitive verb) and other forms of speaking negatively. Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for months. I’ve been thinking about negative patterns of speech reinforcing negative patterns of thinking, and how our culture claims to value positivity, but it actually celebrates destructive criticism, mockery, and derision. I’ve been thinking of the pervasive “everything sucks” culture of the Internet, and ways that I could use my job to be constructive and helpful despite the relentless criticism and rejection that’s inherent to my job as a patent examiner. There's something uncool and kinda naïve and vulnerable and dangerous about making a genuine effort to find the good in something, and about sincerely enjoying and praising it when you find it.

And all this mulling came to a head last week when I found that the text for my lesson in Primary was James 3. The official lesson material was a little, well, bland. I teach the 10–11 year-olds and I’m acutely aware that these kids are in a narrow window where they can conceptualize the difficult situations of their teenage years (and to some extent are looking forward to them), but aren’t yet stuck right in the middle of them. So I tend to bring up a lot of points in my lessons that require the explanation “this is going to make a lot more sense in a couple of years, because you probably haven’t had the experience yet, but it’ll happen all the time in high school and beyond”. And many of these lessons go pretty smoothly because the difficulties of the teenage years are still theoretical.

So I decided to go off script for my lesson. I asked each of the kids to tell the class about something they really liked, whether it was a book, or a movie, or an activity, or anything else that wanted to share. Most responded immediately and enthusiastically, but one of them responded in a way I didn’t expect, at least for a kid of his age. He said, kind of evasively, “I like the floor”, and then tried to defend his disingenuous answer by explaining how terrible it would be if we didn't have floors to prevent gravity from pulling us into the middle of the earth. This was the kind of smart-alecky answer that seemed four years too early for a ten-year-old. So I kept needling him until he sheepishly gave a sincere answer. And then I explained to the rest of the class what had happened, and explained that some time in the early teenage years is when most people decide that it’s no longer cool to sincerely enjoy things, and that most teenagers and adults are far more comfortable talking about things they dislike than things they like, and are far more comfortable criticizing than praising. “That’s weird,” exclaimed one of the girls. I really wish that none of these kids would ever feel any differently.

So we read from James, and I explained that speaking negatively leads to thinking negatively and acting negatively. I rolled back in the official lesson material by talking about various types of negative speech—not just derision and destructive criticism, but vulgarity, profanity, irreverence, and so forth. And I gave them a homework assignment to speak positively of something this week when they were tempted to speak negatively of it instead. Because I’ve decided Tarantino is right: “Never hate [something]. It won’t help you and it’s a waste of time.“