As We Judge
“The poet judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.”
Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855
As the country mourns the death last Friday of pioneering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I am thinking about judges—and about judgement. I think most educators would agree that good judgement is one of the things we try to teach students, because it determines so much about how our lives unfold, and also determines how effectively we can find truth in a confusing world. But we also might agree that judging others—particularly making snap judgements—is one of the traps we would like to help young people avoid.
