September 25, 1968 (I was 23)
Motive Psychal –a theory
Teachers are perhaps
some of the most insecure people on
earth, especially those of
us who go right from college into the field
without an appreciable
interlude in any other area of life.
School life is
secure. It is organized,
programmed, sheltered.
it is a microcosmic
existence filled with tiny traumas and elfin
ecstasies which provide a
suitable surrogate for reality. In
short,
the institutional
environment provides a reasonable facsimile,
without the dangers of
adult society. It may be
reasonable to
assume that those
individuals who are attracted to life-long service
in the system, are the same individuals who, during
their own school
days, allowed themselves to
become attached to the micro-facades of
school society to the
extent of excluding identification with the world
outside that protective
womb.
If this is true, our
educational systems may be filled with
people incapable of
providing students with a suitable preparatory
program for living. What proportion of the accepted values
of school
society are those accepted
in practice in a non-protective atmosphere?
Does great success depend
on an ability to follow orders, to mimic a
textbook and subdue
emotions, or is the truly successful individual
the maverick with a
cultivated disdain for design, an aversion to
accepted truths and an
outrage toward passivity?
-this from one embarking upon a lifetime at
the work
