Education

Brian Lynch

It has taken us a very long time to understand that to teach someone something, anything, is a  difficult task. It is now known through great work by the best of the best in learning theory and education that most education does not do what it sets out to do and that is transfer knowledge. 

A great majority of what we think is going on is fantasy. A lot of this can be seen on the Annenberg website if you are interested. There you can find a somewhat now famous video of interviews with some Harvard students and professors on graduation day. They are being asked some “simple” astronomy questions of a grade school level. Almost no one, if I remember, gets any of them right including an astrophysics student.

There is another video that seems to show, at least to my satisfaction, that even the “best” high school students were learning by “rote” for the most part. They were learning for the test or for the teacher. When pressed no one had an in-depth understanding of the material. No one could sustain his or her own thinking on a given subject, and when pressed on real core understanding they reverted to primitive private understanding. In fact, the title of the video is, beautifully, “Our Own Private Universe.”  NOTE: This essay was written some 14 years ago I have not been able to find the specific videos today but here is the Annebergs present website addressing learning issues: Our Own Private Universe

Why is this? It is because of our old friend “interest.” It has taken all this time for even the best educators to understand that, from the earliest times, children are figuring out the world on their own. Cognition, learning, and thinking do not start just when we adults decide to pour knowledge into a child’s head. 

We are beginning to realize that children, infants, and even fetuses learn and feel. How could it be otherwise? All of this learning starts with a feeling. Thinking comes much later but all kinds of people real and imagined are explaining the world to the child and the child to his or herself. 

At some level, we should be careful telling children that the moon is made of blue cheese and what does the child think of seeing figures falling from ten stories and getting up and walking away? They believe and think sometimes long before they are “taught” anything. These “images” and “scripted” thoughts are primary and because they are primary they will become very solidified and thus very, very difficult to change.

I am fond of pointing out that we, in no way, chose our favorite color. Our favorite color “happened” to us. So too many, many things “happened” to us, including many of the ways we conceptualize the world and thus the basis for the way we are able to learn. That is the way our “interest” will be directed from here on out without some radical change.

The educational system has never appreciated this and what has evolved is a ne'er-do-well system that has developed a system of reading, writing and testing to just get us through the day. Those that succeed may or may not be the brightest or the best, but they are the ones that just happen to be able to manipulate the system consciously or not.

With any thought and examination, we know the “the system” is geared to “practical results” jobs, income, and the like. This is despite the fact that we pay lip service to “real” education and “higher education.”

Mirroring People

Brian Lynch

We have all been with people who are affable and agreeable. They make us feel at ease.

We will now and then get a feeling, however, that something is wrong. You can’t put your finger on it.

Sooner or later and the older we get, the sooner it should be that we understand that the uneasy feeling comes from the person “mirroring” us. They agree with almost anything we say and will often feedback to us exactly what we said, sometimes right away the next day. We are stunned and feel good about it.

But we notice, as time goes on, very little is shared by this person about their own beliefs and desires, and plans. The reason is that they take on the personality and traits of those around them. As we say there is little sense of self.

Some of this is conscious, but most must be unconscious or semiconscious as it is done so consistently and smoothly.

It is whatever the case built on shame. It can be simply annoying or dangerous.

Annoying if the person “simply” needs to be affiliated with you to have some esteem. They never had a chance to develop their talents as probably someone was always blunting them so they learned to avoid the hurt and damage by giving adulation to their caregivers, “humoring them.”

This becomes dangerous when the actions are more conscious and the end of getting something from you.

In this case, it is akin to compulsive lying. “I” am driven to play out a program or script that will get me some emotional satisfaction. Unfortunately the “mark” is only the vehicle to that end. That end is often the excitement of “getting over on someone” or “simply” an avoidance of shame. My shame is so great, my esteem so low that I am driven to not expose anything, or the minimum, about myself. Why? Because I feel I am worthless. Each lie helps accumulate more shame and guilt so I “lie” again, that is I hide my true feelings and I mimic yours. If indeed I have ever had a chance to develop any of my feelings!

Of course, not everyone that does this is such a black-and-white figure. It can be as I said just an irritating trait for the most part. Whatever its degree of intensity it is ultimately from a sense of shame or degradation of self. “I know nothing” is the voice inside. “I am essentially bad.” Even if they say it is the “excitement” they are after, I say they are after the feeling of excitement to block the pain of shame.

“Not lying is lying”

Brian Lynch

“You Tell The Strongest People,

 

The Weakest Lies.”  Sugar Blue

Few of us get to adulthood without realizing that “thou shalt not lie” is a “black and white” simplistic approach to human relations. 

But that does not mean that we often slip into the idea that “we don’t lie.” But since it is impossible to not lie, all we can do is try the best we can.

Now there are various types of lies. Some pump up our ego. It is easily proven that everyone lies when meeting new people. Within ten minutes we are oft to tell, on average, three lies. On the other end, there are “lies” that protect confidences be it a business deal or a clergy parishioner relation, or a doctor-patient relationship.

But from time to time we want to believe in George Washington’s truism of “I never tell a lie.” If we do, we have a problem because then we will deny the need to lie! What happens? Shame and confusion ensue for not lying. But the truth is we will lie in some way just not in the rigid terms we have set for ourselves “I never lie!”

How do we lie? Well, I always end up back to what I have come to feel are our only options when we are suppressing feeling and they are: I can try and run away from the feeling, I can blame myself for the feeling, I can blame you for the feeling or I can do something to avoid the feeling. Each of these can be a type of lying as they all can be and are a type of “avoiding” the issue. Avoiding the issue is a “lie.”

Of course, here we can pick on the “politician.” Watch any politician in a heated interview and there is almost always something they do not want to answer. When they are asked they answer masterfully from years of practice of lying without lying.

They change the subject. They avoid the question altogether and often will, in the process start attaching the opposition. They may “hang up the phone”, or end the interview (withdraw, run away). Rarely, will they attack themselves or blame themselves, but even this might be a lie. That is, they might indeed take the fall for someone.

Then there is “politeness.” I am not interested in you, but I can not say it. Or I “need” you for something. Well, in these cases the relationship itself is a “lie.” It is certainly difficult to avoid some relationships like this. And to be compassionate our feelings are not always clear. We are ambivalent. But in the process we will, often due to shame “show our hand.” We will “Tell the strongest people the weakest lies.” “I didn’t have time to call you.” (translation: I had no interest in talking to you.) “I didn’t get to your emails, you know I don’t like to use the computer.” (translation: ditto). These answers are a combination of “attack” and “avoid”.

Of course in any human encounter if we are on the receiving end of such comments how can we be sure? Well, can you be sure it is a lie? And often, maybe it isn’t. If the speaker is not telling you a lie they certainly will be thrown off guard by being called a liar. Of course, being so blunt statements reveal a lack of empathy and a frankness that is inappropriate. What else could it impart to the listener than “I am not interested in you?” The point is, it is simply difficult. I would say we mostly have to judge people by their actions over a long period. 

As a bit of an aside, I use to work with an ethnic population doing initial hospital admissions. I would ask them if they spoke English. If they said “no” then they usually said they did not “like” English. I hope, in some non-shaming way, I said it had nothing to do with “like”, it had to do with necessity as one could easily die in a foreign country due to not speaking the language. In short, they were lying due to shame. Lying to themselves. It was an easy answer.

So the point is “lying” is not the issue at all. The issue is why I am lying. Am I lying out of some, yes, “moral” duty to a higher ideal, that is lying is often the most “moral” thing to do, or am I lying out of shame?

“The “Good Scène” is too much”

Brian Lynch

What is the “Good Scene?”

The good scene is simple to understand. It is about those situations in which we feel good, interested, and joyful.I explain this situation often in various ways. 

It is thought that throughout our childhood we will have feelings of interest and joy and for the most part they are  accepted as the way things should function.

The problem is that bad feelings are inevitable. These bad feelings are often the consequence of something that thwarts our interest or joy. 

Now what happens to someone that gets their interest lambasted all the time?

Well, it hurts and it hurts a lot.

 

They might come to relate their interest directly to shame and hurt. That is, how can my interest be worth anything? No one lets me pursue them.

So we grow and because of our nature as humans, we cannot help but be “interested” in the world. We do feel good despite ourselves, but in those of us who have been robbed of more “good times” than not, well, don’t you think it would be reasonable for us to have some fear? Fear that any good time I have will end by some fateful act or someone’s hand?

We become constantly on guard when we start to feel good. Our subconscious starts to interpret any of these feelings as being “too good to be true.” Watch out we say to ourselves this cannot last. This good scene cannot last.

This has the most tragic consequences as the better the scene is here in the present the greater the fear that it will end.

It is only natural that I will be confused and probably withdraw. I may even do something to make sure the situation will come to an end. I will ruin the good scene. This is why we sabotage relationships over and over again. We cannot believe they will las

" Are we good enough and smart enough?"

Are we good enough and smart enough?

Brian Lynch

A colleague of mine who worked with the same ideas I do for many years developed a scale for self-evaluation made up of a list of 32 questions.

I would like to present several and explore a few of them. For example:

1) I feel like I am never quite good enough.

2) I feel somehow left out.

3) I think that people look down on me.

The idea is to rate yourself on a scale of 0-4 with “4” being that you feel this way “almost always”, “3” “often”, “2” “ sometimes” and “1” “seldom”.

In the end, you get a score that is then compared to a scale that is based on an average score of a group who took the questionnaire. It is not a “test” but an evaluation.

My purpose is to suggest that the evaluation and each item is a window into the way we imagine ourselves. Each statement is an “Image.” An image can be thought of as a “scene.”

I read the first statement and what immediately happens is that a flood of subconscious thoughts happens, a flood of “scenes” well up in me, situations wherein I have felt exactly that way, at work, in school, taking a test for anything. I am riding the bus or train and looking at everyone and imaging their lives and comparing myself to them.

If I were having such a thought as the statement in #1 suggests it might immediately lead to the thought in number #2 as we will obsess and “magnify” about our difficult situation and start to convince ourselves that our problems have to be worse than everyone else’s.

Now in terms of the questionnaire, the idea is that the 1-4 response is immediate and therefore more a reflection of how your life has gone up until now. Of course, some of us have been lucky and this is the point of the questionnaire to evaluate the overall history of the individual. Maybe I do feel like I am as good as anyone else and put a “0.” This is fine and so we go on to the next. But we still might feel left out some of the time. Now when did we feel left out? Under what circumstances did we feel left out?

Finally, I think the more severe of the three, the last one, is probably an indication of how much we have been put down and humiliated in our lives and the opposite of how little we have been encouraged and rewarded for our efforts, albeit in the end, all three are an indication of these actions.

So by now, I am sure you have rated yourself on just these items. The score means “nothing” in itself. It is a sample. The whole scale, again, is a self-evaluation. But just based on these three items what do you think the difference in feeling and how a person approaches a day is between one who has a score of “0” (that is never feels any of these feelings) compared to someone with a score of “12” (that is almost always has these feelings”). I think their quality of life is quite different.

Can we change our feelings about our “image” and indeed change our self-image? Indeed, I think we can. We can get interested in both our image and how we feel about it.

Copyright 2010

SEE: Internalized Shame Scale