Re: teachers' memories and therapy
Tony Michael Roberts (roberts who-is-at mail.msen.com)
Wed, 29 Oct 1997 09:45:46 -0500 (EST)
I have not read Deborah Britzman's work but I would predict that a year of
mandatory therapy as part of teacher training would weed out potential
teachers who were not "well adjusted" to the demands of the current school
system. My impression is that a lot of Education Profs are people who
became teachers out of idealism and then discovered that they really hated
who they had to be and what they had to do to be "well adjusted" to the
current public school system. I sympathize with your intentions Diane. But
I feel that this mandatory therapy would extend the network of control you
are complaining of in a really dramatic way. The public schools today are,
I believe, less hellish and damaging for students than they would be
otherwise because many teachers have not interpollated the ideology of
control which governs the total system. I think I know, thanks to Szasz
and Foucault, that therapy is never neutral. It is always an instrument of
power shaping attitudes and behaviors in accordance with some set of norms
absolutly priviledged within the process. The therapist is, as Lacan said,
one presumed to know and the client is one presumed to get better as his
or her perceptions came to agree with those of the therapist. Given why
the teacher is in therapy, getting better will inevitably mean getting
comfortable with what ever pattern of violence and bigotry prevails in the
school this therapy is preparing the would be teacher to serve. Would
anyone end up in the classroom after explaining to this therapist that
gender bending by students is healthy exploration but being rigidly ruled
by gender expectations is problematic? I think not. The result would be a
typical classroom environmemt even more viciously sexist and homophobic
than at present thanks to the fact that teachers have been given the
benefit of "therapy".
Hoping all this does not sound to hostile,
Tony Michael Roberts