‘I’ll make it short,’ Simon said. ‘One day, the delinquent chucks a desk through the classroom window, smashing the glass. Teacher doesn’t see it, but he knows full well who did it. The boy won’t confess, though, so the teacher offers a reward to any pupil who’ll speak up and say they saw him do it. A girl – best-behaved kid in the class – stays behind after the lesson, and the teacher thinks she’s going to inform on the delinquent. She doesn’t, though. Instead, she says to the teacher, “He won’t confess for as long as you’re judging and blaming him for what he did. If you tell him that you don’t blame him, that you understand his anger and sadness and want to help him, then he’ll confess.” “Great,” thinks the teacher. “I’ll try that.” He can’t wait to see the delinquent again, so sure is he that his plan’s going to work.’

‘Hang on,’ said Charlie. ‘This is one of Lane Baillie’s Stories of Enlightenment, isn’t it?’

Simon nodded. ‘From her website, but not one that was sent to Sondra Halliday. If I were Billy, I’d have included it in my selection. Next time the teacher sees the delinquent he says exactly what the girl told him to say. He can’t wait for the boy to confess so that he can suspend him, maybe even expel him. But still the boy denies throwing the desk through the window. The teacher complains to the girl—’

‘Unreasonable git! She did her best to help him,’ said Charlie.

‘He tells her he followed her advice to the letter, but it didn’t work. “Of course it didn’t,” she says. “Because when you told the boy that you didn’t blame him and weren’t going to judge him, you were lying, weren’t you? I told you what would be the right thing to say, and it was the right thing. It was your mistake to assume you could say it without meaning it and still get a good result.”

‘“Hang on,” says the confused teacher. “You seriously expect me to say – and mean – that it’s fine by me if a pupil throws a desk through a window?”

‘“Think about why he might be sad,” says the girl. “Think about why he might be angry. Think about his life, and then ask yourself: how might you behave if his pain were your pain?”