Notes From My Journal: Chapter Forty-One

Notes From My Journal: Chapter Forty-One

It is June 29. 1974. I’ve returned to my teaching job in Willows after an absence for summer vacation. I step into Ida’s room and find her at her desk. “Let me have your Bank of America card number. I’ll be making lots of deposits this year,” I tell her. After copying her number, I walk into Joiner’s room. I ask for his bankcard number also. He gives me a very old card with two short numbers on it. I’m not sure which of the two numbers I should copy. Before I can find the correct number the bell rings for the nine o’clock class. I tell Joiner I’ll be back later, and rush off to my classroom.

I see that I have the same sixth graders that I had last year. I’m not sure if they are seventh graders now or if they are repeating the sixth grade. I’m amazed at how much they have grown over the summer. Some have grown two or three feet in height. They act a lot older also, more like high school students than sixth graders. I feel somewhat frightened not sure of how they will react to me. Sensing my fear, they become frightened too.

It is two minutes after nine. Half of the students rise from their seats. I give them a questioning look. One girl returns to her seat. As the rest of the students follow, she smiles and asks, “Too soon?”

“No, go ahead,” I tell her and most of the students take their leave. I begin rummaging through my desk wondering how I will begin the day. Students start to filter back in mingling with those who stayed. I realize now what “Too soon?” means. The class doesn’t begin until 9:15.

On top of my desk I find a copy of Freud’s Civilization and It’s Discontents. It is a large classroom hardback edition. With the book in my hand, I walk to the back of the room. I stand at a chalkboard behind the children. As they turn in their seats, I tell them, “This is our text book for this semester. And, I realize that I have been one rotten teacher for the past several years. I have been teaching you all wrong. I have tried to mold you into carbon copies of myself, specifically myself at your age…”

“Krishnamurti says that our house is on fire. And, I have been worried about the lint on the carpet. In order to put out the fire, we must learn to love. How are you going to learn to love if you don’t learn from our relationship? You know, I have tried to force my ideas upon you, the ideas of our culture. I haven’t gotten to know you, nor you me. I have tried to teach you the fundamentals of our civilization, reading, writing, a little math, and maybe some thinking. How can I do this when I know that our civilization, our culture, or morals and ethics, are totally unnatural.

I have used the same stilted methods that my educators used to teach me. Instead of trying to strengthen your already acute powers of observation, I dull your senses by forcing you to form words to explain your experience. We exchange the word for the thing itself. And as Krishnamurti says, “The word is never the thing itself.” The word negates the experience, and makes oneness impossible. And yet, I fill your heads with words words words…”

As I look at this dream fragment from today, July 3,2011, I realize that it points out a strong contradiction between what I felt about my teaching and what my unconscious was telling me. In my letter to Herb, written a couple of weeks before the dream, I bragged about how much I had improved my teaching methods, about how much more open I was with the kids. And, it was true that I was much more open and in touch with my students than I had been when I first started teaching in Willows in 1967. However, the dream points out that I still had a long way to go.

Krishnamurti maintains that we need to teach the whole child, not just fill his head with knowledge. In order to teach the whole child, the educator must be in contact with his whole self, he must recognize the spiritual aspect of his being. The dream is telling me that like most teachers I was not in contact with my inner self. I was more interested in the material aspects of my life than the deeper internal aspects.

The dream begins with my going into teacher’s rooms and asking for their bankcards. The ‘I’ that I take as myself is going to deposit a lot of money this year, certainly a material thing.

The bell rings for classes to begin and I discover that I am trying to start class fifteen minutes before it actually starts. Time does not exist in the psychological realm, time only functions in the material world. The mix up in class time indicates that my dream is a function of the psychological world.

Our textbook for the new year is Freud’s Civilization and It’s Discontents. In this book Freud points out that man is pressured by society to give up his individuality. This is just what we do as educators by trying to mold the student into carbon copies of our self. Instead of helping our students find their unique individual aspects, we force them to conform to standards of our culture.

Freud states “That the education of young people at the present day conceals from them the part which sexuality will play in their lives is not the only reproach that which we are obliged to make against it. Its other sin is that it does not prepare them for the aggressiveness of which they are to become the objects.” In fact, our educational system tends to completely ignore the unconscious and the effects that it has upon us.

The dream was telling me that I needed to delve deeper into my inner self and discover the fears and habits that were forcing me to function at a lower level of consciousness. The dream shows that I could not help my students to develop the deeper aspects of them selves until I was more aware of those aspects of my own self.

One of the biggest faults of our educational system is that we do not teach the whole child. We completely ignore the spiritual development that is necessary for a complete individual. The dream was telling me that I had to work much harder on this aspect of my self, that I had to revise my thinking and total approach to teaching.