America's future is at risk if schools do not improve,
says a
recently published report by the Council on Foreign Relations,
a research and policy organization. This warning, in my opinion, can be
rendered more precisely to include the dangers to the nation and the world if
psychological education does not improve.
Superior education teaches self-knowledge. Such teaching penetrates
into the psyche or unconscious mind, making conscious what has previously been
unconscious. This self-knowledge is needed to break through the thick clouds of
unknowing and self-doubt that trouble so many children. It's what we all need
to navigate through complex, perilous times.
Higher learning is fundamentally developmental, write
Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersh in We're
Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan,
New York. 2011). Such learning, say the authors, "inspires, reinforces, and
reflects the growth and maturation of the learner as a whole human being." This learning is not limited to the
acquisition of new information. Rather, "it is centered in the potential for
change in the learner as a result of engagement with new knowledge and
experiences."
Keeling and Hersh are writing about education at the
college and university levels. Yet children at elementary levels can also experience
learning as a transformative process. That will certainly be true if they are taught
the basics of how emotional suffering and self-sabotage are created and held in
place in our psyche.
If we could put our psyche under a high-powered
microscope, we would be shocked at the extent of the inner cognitive and
emotional processing that our naked eye (common sense) knows nothing about. Our
psyche is a reservoir of positive and negative emotions, and from it arises
mental and emotional processing that's contaminated by inner conflict,
irrationality, egotism, passivity, and aggression.
I remember being taught a few basics of psychoanalysis
when in high-school in the late 1950s. I distinctly remember being rather
befuddled by the subject, yet I was also somehow comforted and reassured by this
knowledge about the ego, id, and superego. The knowledge helped me to demystify
my mind, and it gave me a comforting sense of having some regulation over my
frail emotions, along with a nodding acquaintance of my elusive self.
Educators do try to produce self-esteem in young
people, but they often do so by offering unearned praise that gives kids an
inflated sense of their abilities and misrepresents their knowledge and skill
level. Psychologists are part of the problem. They have stubbornly refused,
individually and collectively, to agree upon the basic psychological truths
that could be presented to children as a course of study beginning in early
grades. (See " Three
Great Truths from Psychology ".) Psychologists as a
group have also been too passive in not insisting that psychological insight be
taught effectively in our schools. Without top-notch psychological education,
how can our children raise the level of human consciousness and help us to
avoid ongoing self-sabotage and impending calamity?
Voices of resistance will arise to oppose any
educational initiatives that threaten narrow belief systems. The psychological
community, by uniting in common purpose, can counteract this resistance by
speaking with power and wise authority, while communicating the value and
necessity of acquiring such valuable knowledge.
Such a project could produce a textbook of the finest
insight and wisdom, written with great skill to communicate the knowledge that,
because of psychological resistance, can be challenging to learn. What is this
vital knowledge that needs to be taught in our schools? Some of that wisdom
would include study of the following precepts from depth psychology.
Lesson
1 :
Much of what goes on in our emotional life is unconscious. We react to events
and situations based on our conscious or unconscious memories and associations.
We repeat and recycle painful emotions that are unresolved from our past, no
matter how painful or self-defeating they may be. Hence, it's vitally important
to become more conscious of the issues, motivations, and intentions behind our
impulses, thoughts, actions, and feelings.
Lesson
2 :
Strength can manifest as physical power and athletic ability. It can also
manifest as mental prowess that can solve complex problems. Yet the greater
strength is emotional. This is the strength to avoid, with some degree of
success, becoming upset, frightened, stubborn, or angry when someone is being
inconsiderate, mean, or rejecting toward us. We learn about our emotional
weaknesses--particularly our sensitivities to feeling deprived, refused,
controlled, rejected, criticized, and devalued--with the aim of overcoming them.
Lesson
3 :
Often we treat others the way we treat ourselves. We can be mean to ourselves
through our inner critic. That's the part in our psyche that's habitually
insensitive, demeaning, and aggressive. We're capable of tormenting ourselves
for the tiniest mistakes through this agency or dynamic operating in our
psyche. Meanwhile, if we are also mean to others, we likely have someone in our
life who is (or has been) mean or insensitive to us.
Lesson
4 :
Feeling like a victim can lead to a self-defeating state of mind. True, there
are some genuine victims of unfortunate circumstances, but often we embellish
or exaggerate the feeling, partly because we make an emotional association with
the helplessness and vulnerability we felt as young children. Thinking like a
victim has its source in undetected passivity in our psyche. Feeling like a
victim, we're more likely to draw bad things our way.
Lesson
5 :
Meanness, malice, and bullying are aspects of human nature. These behaviors
exist because people haven't learned how to control or regulate their own
negativity and aggression. The perpetrators of unkindness and abuse are
responsible for curbing that behavior, while those who feel themselves to be
recipients of such negativity also must try to acquire the emotional strength,
in the form of verbal skills and other resources, to avoid making themselves
easy targets.
Lesson
6: Growing
in wisdom means we no longer identify with our mind, body, personality,
possessions, skills, and athletic prowess. While we should feel good, of
course, about our qualities and abilities, we want to understand that our
essential being--the consciousness at the core of our existence--is the source of
our greatest happiness, fulfillment, and wisdom. That core value already exists
inside us. Our task is to help that light become brighter and brighter.