The Philosophic Calmness

A student of grade 9 hit me with a blackboard duster right on my face while he was playing with his friend, just as I was about to enter the class to teach Physics after the morning recess. Though I succumbed to the pain of that semi-wooden duster, seeing the inflamed face of the child filled with fear and guilt, I chose to craft some irrelevant flesh of conversation with the class—only to settle the dust of fear that had begun to cloud the mind of that student. What could have escalated into a severe reprimand faded instead into silence. That woeful incident quietly passed into the folds of forgotten history.

Bizarrely, the wick of my temper—which is normally highly inflammable and explosive—froze in that moment. What extinguished it was the sudden recollection of the phrase, “The Philosophic Calmness”, as described by Freeman Dyson in Disturbing the Universe. The concept lingered, and it became the guiding principle of my response.

Within that small canopy of forbearance, I attempted to view the accident with calmness. In that moment of self-restraint, I mentally hyperlinked the incident to the things I had done as a student some 12 years ago. That reflection led to a quiet realisation: what he had done was not malicious, but a mere manifestation of adolescent mischief. From a psychological perspective, he was playing a healthy role as a juvenile—portraying the rudimentary and expected characteristics of his age. That is, he was modestly living his youth.

Yet, the pain on my face — further fuelled by embarrassment at the breach of classroom decorum—demanded a response. Hence, I resolved to bathe him with the soap of positive disciplining, not as a punitive act but as a gentle deterrent, so as to curb the possibility of future relapse.

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Understanding Adolescence through Reflection

I narrate this episode not to highlight a ritualistic pattern of student behaviour in today’s classrooms, but because it clothes itself with a flesh of profound insight. The message, if digested with the right prescription, could serve as a valuable alternative for us—as parents and educators—in understanding adolescents with more depth and less judgement.

In contrast to this relatively benign incident, students do, at times, find themselves embroiled in matters that are legally grave, disciplinarily sensitive, and societally intolerable. When this happens, schools call upon parents to take responsibility for their child’s actions. Unfortunately, some parents shift blame onto the institution, criticising the consequences imposed without realising that these measures are designed to correct the wrongdoer and deter others from repeating the same.

Worse still, in certain instances, parents aggravate their child’s distress with additional humiliation and unnecessary apprehension. They fail to see, with a certain degree of calmness, that these acts—however inconvenient or embarrassing—are part of growing up. It is sometimes acceptable to be caught puffing off, to take a forbidden sip, or to be seen with someone special. After all, how dull and fun-less would life be without the thrill of living it your own way—the guilt of breaking a rule, the suspense of being caught, and the reckoning with the consequences that follow?

We have all travelled through that same corridor of adolescence, troubling our own parents along the way. Therefore, we must learn to view today’s youth with that same philosophic calmness—the understanding that, so long as no criminal mindset is cultivated, a certain degree of impishness is tolerable.

Of course, this is not an invitation to celebrate or encourage disruptive behaviour. Even when viewed narrowly, it must not be misunderstood as permission to let disorder grow unchecked. Rather, it is a call to respect the age they are passing through. As responsible adults, we must meet them not with disdain or denial, but with understanding and patience. Using our own calmness as a philosophical lens, we must realise—they are teens, and they are simply living their age.