Crossroads: Listening to a Talk on Responsible Decisions, and Writing a Story of a Moral Choice

1Listening: "Crossroads", a radio talk

A radio script written for this lesson; the counsellor and the listener are imagined. Work in pairs: one of you reads the script aloud at a natural speed while the other closes the book and takes notes. Then swap for the second half.

PRESENTER: Good evening, and welcome back to Crossroads, the programme where young people bring us their hardest questions. Tonight's comes from a listener in Huye, who writes: "How do I know whether a decision is the right one?" With me is Mr Habimana, who has been a school counsellor for fifteen years. Mr Habimana, where do we begin?

COUNSELLOR: Let me begin with a distinction. A choice is what you pick. A decision is the whole process by which you arrive there. You cannot always control how things turn out, but you can control the process, and that is what I want to talk about. I have three points.

COUNSELLOR: First, slow down. Most of the bad decisions students describe to me were made in under a minute, very often with friends watching. Psychologists and economists use the term present bias for our habit of giving too much weight to how we feel now and too little to how we will feel next month. Even one night's pause gives your future self a vote.

COUNSELLOR: Second, widen the options. When someone tells me "I had no choice", they usually mean "I had two choices and I disliked both." Let me give you an example. A friend asks you to sign the attendance register for him while he skips a lesson. It looks like a choice between refusing, and losing a friend, or signing, and lying. But there is a third way: you can refuse to sign and offer to share your notes with him afterwards. The point I'm making is that the first two options are rarely the only two.

COUNSELLOR: Third, look beyond yourself. Ask who else is affected: the teacher, the other students, your family. I use what I call the daylight test. Would you be comfortable if everyone affected could see exactly what you did, and why? If the honest answer is no, that is not proof that you are wrong, but it is information, and you should take it seriously.

PRESENTER: Isn't there a danger that a young person thinks for so long that they never decide at all?

COUNSELLOR: Absolutely, and that brings me to my last word. Not deciding is also a decision; it simply lets other people make it for you. Once you have decided, own it. If it goes wrong, say "I decided", not "it happened". That sentence is where responsibility begins.

2Taking notes that work: the Cornell layout

The Cornell method was designed by Walter Pauk, who taught study skills at Cornell University in the United States. Divide the page into a narrow cue column, a wide notes column and a summary strip. During the talk, write in the notes column only, using abbreviations. Afterwards, turn each chunk of notes into a question or key word in the cue column, then write a two-sentence summary. To revise, cover the notes and answer the cues aloud.

Notice how the signposts in the talk ("First", "Second", "Third", "my last word") became the numbered cues.

3Listening for function

Discussion. In groups, apply the counsellor's three steps to this case: your cousin offers you a well-paid weekend job, but it would mean missing the two revision sessions before your national examinations. Name at least three options, the stakeholders, and the result of the daylight test.

4Creative writing: a story of a moral choice

The envelope was lying on the footrest when Nshuti looked down, fat and brown, the flap tucked in. His passenger had already vanished into the crowd at the Nyabugogo bus park, phone pressed to her ear, still talking. He called out. A bus horn drowned him.

He did not open it until he had parked under the jacaranda behind the market. One hundred and eighty thousand francs, in new notes. A pharmacy receipt with a woman's name on it, and a telephone number written in blue pen across the top.

Bella's school fees were due on Monday. One hundred and fifty thousand.

She was careless, he told himself. Nobody saw. If a bus had driven over it, would anyone blame the bus? He said it again, more slowly, to see whether it sounded better the second time. It did not.

He rode two more passengers that afternoon and remembered neither of them. Every time he braked, the envelope pressed against his ribs like a second heartbeat.

At six he stopped at the roadside and smoothed out the receipt. Under the woman's name was a list he could not pronounce, and the word Paediatrics, and a total. He looked at the total for a long time.

The phone rang twice before she answered. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had spent the afternoon crying, or shouting, or both.

"You don't know me," he began.

That evening Bella asked him why he was smiling at a plate of beans, and he said it was because the beans were very good, which was also true.

5How the story is built