The Dream Day
Freud refers to two stages of learning psychology, but what he says of a specific subject matter applies also to learning in school in general. In the first stage the student—the child, in my orientation—learn things, the subject matter. Adam Phillips says that this stage in Freud’s language is identification: the student becomes identified as a person who knows things! We teachers love these students: they correctly answer all the questions in class and on our tests. They are ‘good students.’ In the episode “Saint Joan” in the first season of Joan of Arcadia, this student is represented by Steve Zackheim. “Will that be on the test,” he wonders, rather than be concerned with the validity of the newly presented item or the implications of it for historical understanding. His teacher refers to Zackheim as his best student.
But in the second stage, the student takes in what is presented in class or in the texts and consciously or unconsciously does something with it: makes the material her own in whatever form she desires. Joan Girardi makes of the Hundred Years War a personal quest to study the character and martyrdom of Joan of Arc with whom she identifies. Mr. Dreisback’s description of Joan of Arc as a paranoid schizophrenic with messianic tendencies threatens Joan’s own attachment to sanity, and her pursuit of Joan of Arc is a personal quest to know herself. Her effort exasperates her teacher and the school administrators who are interested solely in ‘the teaching.’ Joan’s quest leads to learning—even a learning acceptable to the powers that be—she earns an “A+ on the test--but the route to her learning was idiosyncratic and beyond the understanding of her teacher or indeed, anyone else, even her family and close friends.
Phillips says that the first stage of learning—the teaching itself—is like what Freud calls ‘the dream day,’ that process by which we select material for the night’s dream. Our dreams will idiosyncratically do something with that material to create the dream. I really love that idea: that we are all artists on the inside looking about for material out of which to construct our dreams. “So,” says Phillips, “the student finds himself unwittingly drawn to specific bits of the subject being taught—whatever the emphasis of the teacher happens to be—which [the student] will then, more or less secretly (even to himself) transform into something strange.”
So, I was about to drift off for an afternoon nap when across my consciousness rose the image of a man in the apartment condominium across from me exiting his front door holding a lawn sprinkler—one of those oscillating mechanisms with a steel curved bar (but maybe it is aluminum, I don’t know) with nipples for the spray of water, and with the mechanism sitting on a yellow plastic base and frame. The problem for me is that though there I have seen a man entering and leaving the front door of the condominium across from me, though there is miniscule flower bed occupied by a few plants and decorative butterfly posts, and though there is a green hose attached to a spigot, there is not present, and has never been present, a lawn sprinkler as I have crudely described above. There is absolutely no need of such a device—having one would be like purchasing an industrial jack hammer to hang a picture in my living room.
But I wondered (even as I drifted off to sleep) whence that image derived? Once, I lived in a house and I think I recall (already an interesting grammatical construction) in the garage were one or two of these lawn sprinklers, but I honestly cannot recall using them. And I wonder why would I assign ownership of one to a man across the way to whom I have never spoken and of whom I have not the slightest knowledge? And who, in fact, may not even live in the condominium but is keeping company with the woman who does live there! What dream was I creating? More, who is this “I” that has drawn these bits and pieces—the man stepping out of the door of the condo behind me with the sprinkler in his right hand, the sunny day and the anticipation of watering . . . well, what exactly did I think was about to be watered? What needed watering?
But in the second stage, the student takes in what is presented in class or in the texts and consciously or unconsciously does something with it: makes the material her own in whatever form she desires. Joan Girardi makes of the Hundred Years War a personal quest to study the character and martyrdom of Joan of Arc with whom she identifies. Mr. Dreisback’s description of Joan of Arc as a paranoid schizophrenic with messianic tendencies threatens Joan’s own attachment to sanity, and her pursuit of Joan of Arc is a personal quest to know herself. Her effort exasperates her teacher and the school administrators who are interested solely in ‘the teaching.’ Joan’s quest leads to learning—even a learning acceptable to the powers that be—she earns an “A+ on the test--but the route to her learning was idiosyncratic and beyond the understanding of her teacher or indeed, anyone else, even her family and close friends.
Phillips says that the first stage of learning—the teaching itself—is like what Freud calls ‘the dream day,’ that process by which we select material for the night’s dream. Our dreams will idiosyncratically do something with that material to create the dream. I really love that idea: that we are all artists on the inside looking about for material out of which to construct our dreams. “So,” says Phillips, “the student finds himself unwittingly drawn to specific bits of the subject being taught—whatever the emphasis of the teacher happens to be—which [the student] will then, more or less secretly (even to himself) transform into something strange.”
So, I was about to drift off for an afternoon nap when across my consciousness rose the image of a man in the apartment condominium across from me exiting his front door holding a lawn sprinkler—one of those oscillating mechanisms with a steel curved bar (but maybe it is aluminum, I don’t know) with nipples for the spray of water, and with the mechanism sitting on a yellow plastic base and frame. The problem for me is that though there I have seen a man entering and leaving the front door of the condominium across from me, though there is miniscule flower bed occupied by a few plants and decorative butterfly posts, and though there is a green hose attached to a spigot, there is not present, and has never been present, a lawn sprinkler as I have crudely described above. There is absolutely no need of such a device—having one would be like purchasing an industrial jack hammer to hang a picture in my living room.
But I wondered (even as I drifted off to sleep) whence that image derived? Once, I lived in a house and I think I recall (already an interesting grammatical construction) in the garage were one or two of these lawn sprinklers, but I honestly cannot recall using them. And I wonder why would I assign ownership of one to a man across the way to whom I have never spoken and of whom I have not the slightest knowledge? And who, in fact, may not even live in the condominium but is keeping company with the woman who does live there! What dream was I creating? More, who is this “I” that has drawn these bits and pieces—the man stepping out of the door of the condo behind me with the sprinkler in his right hand, the sunny day and the anticipation of watering . . . well, what exactly did I think was about to be watered? What needed watering?
posted by Alan A. Block at 6:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home