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Often, teachers allow themselves to evaluate not only our knowledge of the subject, but also our personality. We sometimes remember their venomous remarks all our lives, they hurt us even years later. Why are these phrases so poignant? And how to get rid of their power?
“Too restless”, “constantly distracted”, “does everything too slowly”, “poorly thinks in class” … It’s not very pleasant to hear this from a teacher about your child. However, it is better to let the parents hear it than the child himself. Moreover, the reproaches addressed to him at school are almost certainly much harder: “you are hopeless”, “mediocrity”, “fool”, “you will go to the janitors”.
The place where children are supposed to learn from wise and caring teachers often becomes a school of ruthlessness and oppression. And it’s one thing – insults and ridicule from peers, classmates. But quite another is the murderous phrases of teachers, authoritative adults whose generalizations cast doubt on the very identity of the child.
First verdict
Thomas Mann devoted the saddest and bleakest chapter in his rather idyllic novel The Buddenbrooks to one day that his hero spends at school. At some point, the teenager even feels compassion for the teacher who scolded him and mentally turns to him: “I don’t persecute you, I don’t mock you, candidate Moderson, because I consider it rude, ugly, vulgar. How are you paying me?”
Of course, a lot has changed since the XNUMXth century. If only because physical punishment is a thing of the past. But today’s students are also suffering. Almost everyone remembers the offensive comment of the teacher. Why do these phrases have such an impact on us, sometimes depriving us of faith in ourselves for a long time?
The psychotherapist Alfred Adler explains in his book “Raising Children. Interaction of the sexes”, how “difficult for the state of mind of the child is constant poor grades in diaries or the reputation of a loser”.
The child already feels his inferiority due to the fact that he is still “inferior to adults in growth and strength”, he has “the impression that he is in an unfavorable position.” This feeling of inferiority is reinforced when one of the teachers evaluates him negatively.
A betrayed trust
About how life works and how to behave in it, we initially learn from adults.
“Growing up, we can’t even always realize where we get this or that view of things,” explains family psychotherapist Oksana Orlova. — These uncritically perceived, early learned, but “undigested” knowledge psychologists call introjects.
Early in life, every child learns to build a healthy attachment to a significant adult, usually a mother. As he socializes, he begins to look for other significant adults. And such people become teachers whom the child a priori trusts.
The child is convinced: if the teacher saw it, then everyone around notices it
It seems to the student that the teacher knows more about him than himself, and even that he knows the truth, which is inaccessible to the student himself.
When the disapproving remarks of the teacher do not concern the area where he has the right to evaluate the student, they have an even more destructive effect on the child, because they appear to him as the thoughts of a whole group, argues the philosopher and psychotherapist Nicole Prieur in Our Children, These Little Philosophers.
“If we are talking about the character traits or the appearance of the student, the child is convinced that if the teacher saw it, then everyone around notices it,” emphasizes Nicole Prieur. “And he will have to hide in a corner and fight this, as it seems to him, the general idea of him.”
Personal experience
“Only years of therapy allowed me to free myself from this legacy”
“In the ninth grade, the class teacher at some extracurricular conversation suddenly turned to me and said: “But it seems that nothing good will come of you in life,” recalls psychologist Irina Mlodik. — It was unexpected. We didn’t talk about me, I didn’t ask her opinion. But I gathered my courage and asked: “Why?” She replied: “You don’t know how to adapt like your friend.” For me at that time it meant – you do not know how to cheat, manipulate, or even be arrogant.
Then this “prediction” angered me. But then I met more than once with other people’s disappointment in me. For many years it seemed to me that something was wrong with me, that I could not compete with the “right” people. I did not believe in myself even when the first successes appeared: books, articles, dissertation.
I was surprised that my colleagues and leaders valued me, I could not appropriate either my achievements or their recognition. The feeling that I would certainly be exposed did not leave me for many years. After all, in the depths of my soul, I don’t represent myself as “nothing worthwhile” and … as if I’m “fooling” everyone.
Years of therapy have freed me from this legacy, and now I can say to that teacher, “You were wrong. You are probably not as good with people as you thought. And in general, they violated with this statement both ethical boundaries and my personal ones.
Teachers are parental figures, we believe them, because in many respects through their opinion we create an idea of ourselves. Teenagers, of course, throw adults off their pedestal, but they are just entering adulthood and are very worried, not knowing if they can cope with it. The future is so uncertain that you want to rely on something. Therefore, teenagers love to ask for opinions about themselves through questionnaires and social networks, love tests, and generally want to learn as much as possible about themselves.
A teacher, like parents, can lay a strong foundation in the child for his self-confidence or punch a hole into which any achievements will fall. It is a pity that not everyone is responsible for what knowledge is left in the soul of a child.
An attack on the ideal
At 36, Maria, the head of the PR department of a large telecom operator, still blushes when she has to speak in public: “At 12, I moved to a new school where I didn’t know anyone and was late for a chemistry class. All the students were already seated. The teacher greeted me loudly: “Good start! She was ten minutes late! You’re doing the right thing by blushing!”
Since then, I’ve been blushing all the time. Every time in a stressful situation, I feel that everyone is looking at me, and I am overcome with a sharp sense of shame.
Offensive remarks hurt, according to Nicole Prieur, both the narcissistic beginning and the child’s self-esteem. The word of the teacher affects the ideal “I” (what we dream of becoming) and begins to play the role of “super-I”, our conscience, the inner judge.
That is why it is especially unsettling at an age that corresponds to important phases of the formation of the psyche – for example, when entering school and during puberty. In the early years of life, we are “our own ideal,” as Sigmund Freud states in his book On Narcissism. Essays on the theory of sexuality, but by the age of six or seven the situation changes.
“At school, the child begins to be evaluated much more actively than in kindergarten, and most importantly, he gets out of the state when being himself is a matter of course,” explains Nicole Prieur. “The child becomes vulnerable to external judgment, which is no longer as benevolent as it used to be.”
He notices that he is not endowed with all perfections, and transfers the love that he can no longer direct to his “I”, to the ideal to which he will henceforth strive. “But it is precisely this striving for the ideal,” continues Nicole Prieur, “that can be destroyed by a hurting remark from a teacher.”
Weaknesses of caregivers
The other side of the question is why teachers allow themselves such intemperance, why they evaluate a person, and not just his school success.
“A teacher needs to develop a quality that will allow him to survive in the profession,” explains Oksana Orlova. – Often this personal property is authoritativeness. Without power, it is difficult for a teacher to maintain an expert position. And when we have power, we lose our self-critical attitude and easily mix personal and professional.”
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that teachers also have their own narcissistic complexes and their own “super-I”.
Some adults believe that their harsh statements temper children
“Hanging labels on a child and talking about his abilities as a whole is more characteristic of “narcissistic” teachers, for whom their own failure or professional helplessness is unbearable,” says Vitaly Sonkin, a Gestalt therapist. – They need an “objective” statement that this student is unteachable. Only in this case they will not feel their own guilt for his unsatisfactory studies.
There are enough means for such shifting of blame: you can call to the board in such a tone that the child is frightened and confirms the status of a loser. You can demand from the child himself and his parents the recognition that he is not able to learn anything. Very quickly, as a result of these manipulations of narcissistically traumatized teachers, children themselves become traumatized.
But there is one secret that helps to interact with teachers of this type.
“As responsive and responsible people — namely, responsibility made a pedagogical failure unbearable for them — they need recognition and gratitude,” explains Vitaly Sonkin. “And if you tell such a teacher that you appreciate his contribution to the development of the child and ask for help, most likely he will respond and soften.”
Inspire hope for a better future
And yet, the main thing that interested adults can do is support the child and believe in him, teach him to see his strengths and build on his successes. As Alfred Adler said, “to inspire hope and joy in the face of the future” – that should be the main task of relatives and teachers.
Perhaps some teachers believe that with their harsh statements they psychologically harden children, preparing them for future challenges: “In life, everything will be much harsher,” “The world is now very tough.”
Well, the world really doesn’t treat us too kindly. But he will continue to be so – harsh and unfriendly – if we prepare children for this. It depends on them what the future world will be like.
And if the children we teach and educate are constantly stressed, then our common future will inevitably be stressful. If we strive for something else, then we all have to raise children for this different, better, future.
“You, Soldiers, are neither fish nor fowl!”
Anton, 29 years old, historian
“At one time (in the seventh or eighth grade) I was strongly influenced by one phrase that a biology teacher said in a lesson. She asked one girl to bring a journal from the teacher’s room. She did not return for a long time, and then the teacher decided to send me. I asked a little naively: “But you have already sent Masha for the magazine.” To this she says irritably: “You, Soldiers, are neither fish nor fowl.”
This phrase hurt me a lot. At school, I was not very sociable, and sometimes it seemed to me that maybe something was wrong with me or I was behaving incorrectly. It was comforting to think that maybe I’m just so special. There were teachers who helped me maintain this sense of self. And then suddenly the biologist, for no reason at all, threw such a phrase, as if she felt my deepest self-doubts.
This phrase, like a stray bullet, hit me right in the heart. I didn’t say anything at the time, but her words stuck with me for the rest of my life. Maybe it was the resentment that prompted me in a couple of years to create an image for myself that would show: “I spit on your opinions and assessments.”
I made myself a mohawk, tried to shock those around me, and when they confirmed that the shocking was a success, I was flattered: it means that I have my own face. Perhaps, I am still in search of myself, but now I understand that I should not tie my internal searches to other people’s assessments.
“Everything is done carelessly, somehow. This is the work of a moron”
Alexandra, 45, journalist
“I was a “home” child, and the school was the first experience of socialization. By the first grade, I had already read Dumas, Stevenson, Bianchi, Paustovsky, Tolstoy’s “Childhood” … Probably, my behavior was different from the behavior of other children, I was bored in the classroom. I did not indulge, I sat like a mouse, it would seem that it is easier for teachers – but I annoyed them.
When I first came to the labor lesson, we were asked to make an “autumn album”: stick fallen leaves on paper. I made a composition, and the next day my parents and I are called to the teacher, where she says: “Look how casually everything is done, somehow. It’s the work of a moron.”
The teacher tried to convince her parents for a long time that “your daughter’s behavior needs serious correction, it will be difficult for her in the team.” For me, this meant that I was not like everyone else, I was the worst. During my school years, I tried, as it seems to me now, to differ as little as possible from other children. I spent a lot of mental energy on this mimicry. I learned to play along, sought the location of teachers and classmates …
There was a moment when I decided not to get A’s in order to be like one of the girls – a weak student, but an informal class leader. And then, when I chose a profession for myself – creative, requiring the manifestation of individuality – it turned out that I needed to work in the opposite direction, to reveal my “I”, to return to myself.
“You can’t decide, horror! How will you continue to live?
Ekaterina, 34 years old, advertising specialist
“At school, my friendship with the exact sciences did not work out. Although I tried: I crammed, wrote reports to cover the triples with five and get four in a quarter. But the algebra teacher did not seem to notice my efforts. And she managed to find fault even where there was no talk of mathematics at all. Once, when I participated in an amateur competition and they let me learn the words, she came up and asked with a sneer if I could remember such a large text.
One day she called me to the blackboard and asked me to solve a problem using the theorem that we learned in the same lesson. I knew the solution, but I stumbled – I think not everyone can decide with lightning speed. I always needed a little more time in math. The teacher broke down: “I just explained, how did you not understand? You can’t decide! Horror. How will you continue to learn how to live? I was ready to fall through the ground. In front of everyone, I was insulted, humiliated. I remember that feeling and I still hate myself for it.
This phrase broke something in me. Every time something doesn’t work right away, I panic. Can I do it at all? Was it worth taking? What if I do something wrong and everyone knows about it? Just a phrase, but she lives with me for so many years. Now I work in an IT company, where employees are “you” with the exact sciences. But I still don’t like math. And I often repeat to myself: “I can, I can, I don’t owe anyone!”