Compromising Self-styled Individuality
Though over a long-run pure relaxation would become a bore, the short-lived hours of idleness normally available are appreciated psychologically as a just reward. Were the head of the household at home long enough for the children and dogs underfoot to effect irritability, or were he/she not usually involved in maintenance projects of modern living, vegetating of this sort would be an eternal nightmare or equivalent to eroding perceptions of uncreative, early retirement. The pressing pace of suburban living offers to family men and women little true idle time for dwelling and being-in-the-world. Ironically, in virtue of this lack, emerges the intensity of satisfaction. It is perhaps a hedonistic principle that one indeed senses self presence of being when evoked that tomorrow may be the end, or at least that pleasurable moments are but volatile. Studying or writing, however, has a sustaining permanence.
As a breadwinner and teacher in the family, it is doubtful that one could justify this pursuit of study, if there were not the supplemental rationale of ultimately receiving a higher living standard for the brood; though in truth and privately one enjoyed it immensely in the sheer challenging fulfilment of oneself. Still, curiously this joy — possibly because it is mixed with some pain or labor — is underpinned by the ultimate which is pure relaxation! In a weird way this relaxation is alienation from the real world of daily activity; for there appears always to be noisome attributes to any job, usually from management which imposes its style onto the structures of a labor that is inclined to be creative. Still, one as a rule learns quickly to cope with this peripheral imposition, recognizing that labor, creative or otherwise, is not in a vacuum but dynamically ecological.
With a teacher, the immediate interference of disruptive students when one is sincere in his/her teaching efforts is a violation of freedom to work — in the same manner as students believe the teacher to be in violation of their play — within the framework of instructional style that ostensibly or hopefully contributes somewhat to a good in society. A teacher soon grasps the dynamics of this living horror and out of survival compromises the profession by swinging over almost completely to the affective aspect of learning at the expense of cognition.
A teacher who thus shifts successfully is reaching the students, but the students are not reaching for him/her cognitively to the extent originally set up ideally. This is not to say that a teacher ought to standardize the work dictated by the discipline of the subject being taught — after all, the work is public or ecological requiring student input — nevertheless, the teacher’s individuality is compromised. In other words, “reality” somehow is always out of joint with the individual’s great expectations.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: February 21, 2004.