Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.
Have you ever tried to change something significant about
yourself, whether a personality trait, a bad habit or another
aspect of your life? Did it work? Have you ever tried to get
someone else to change? What happened? How much, in general, do
you believe people can change? Why? In a piece called “How
People Change,” the Op-Ed columnist David Brooks quotes a now-
famous e-mail sent by Harry Crews, a disappointed British
father, to his three grown children. Mr. Crews notes his
children’s failed marriages and lack of careers and writes, “It
is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the
bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out
to us.” He finishes his e-mail with “I want to hear no more from
any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an
achievement or a REALISTIC plan … to tell me about.” Mr. Brooks
then writes: That e-mail, released by one of his daughters
hoping to get publicity for a book she i