The destructive persona in teaching

[ted]

Stormx's post in the Students' Corner highlights a very destructive social tendency in all institutions of learning, especially those at an earlier level than university. Indeed, the same phenomenon frequently occurs in the workplace, where it does incalculable damage in terms of staff turnover, discontent and inefficiency. It is where people of otherwise admirable quality and skill allow, either deliberately or often unconsciously, the development of their personas to such a gross extent that honest and free communication with other people becomes next to impossible.

This was particularly bad in single-sex secondary schools based on the English "public school" system. Many of the teachers at the school I attended were sportsmen and academics of distinction, men of moral quality and standing in the community. Respect from the boys was theirs for the asking, but what did they do ? They dressed in gowns and paraded about like characters from a John Cleese farce, waving canes and terrorising pupils with threats and sarcasm, in the classroom and outside it.

Their personas were blown up into gross caricatures, reinforced by decades of vacuous gestures of dominance over hapless boys. It never ceases to amaze me how men of my age, who should know a lot better by now, still romanticise about that pathetic and stupid education system. What annoys me more than anything else is that I could have been intellectual friends with these teachers. They had experience and insight and I had interesting ideas ahead of my age. I could have learned much from them, but when each enquiry, each attempt at rational communication is met by the response of a kindergarten bully, what is a sensitive teenager to do ?

I suppose most members of this forum are too young to realise how times have changed for the better in this respect. Perhaps in many ways discipline has become too slack now or, to be precise, the art of self-discipline is not as adequately taught as it once was. Nonetheless, to see the way my son could communicate sincerely with his teachers, as one mind to another, was a joy indeed. The workplace, unfortunately lags behind, and there exist many, usually people in power and authority, who grow their personas like expanding cream cakes of arrogance, thinking that their positions give them the right to communicate rudely.

Therefore even at the comparatively minor level of private piano teacher and pupil, it is necessary for those who value honest communication to quietly stand up for themselves.