Let us glimpse how this can be done!
Let us go into a few classrooms and see what a few teachers do.
Let's drop into a room marked "English and Social Studies"
Here in a high school B12 room the focus is on "problems of democracy." The boys and girls have pulled their chairs into a circle and sit comfortably, the teacher's chair in the circle also.
"It's strange," she is saying, "the way we came to be doing what we're doing. But perhaps not so strange . . ."
"No, I don't think it is," one bright-eyed girl picks up the words. "We started out talking about the American Revolution and then you asked how we would have felt if we'd been among the rebels. And then Bob made a crack about not having to imagine that far back . . ."
"No, I didn't," Bob protests. "I started to tell how I would have felt. And then, don't you remember? Miss Gibbs said that I was talking as if I were really feeling rebellious . . ."
" Bob's right!" from the dark wisp of a girl sitting next to him, "and then Miss Gibbs said that lots of people, in fact everybody, feels rebellious at times in their lives."
"And then we began on the things we've felt rebellious about . . ."
"And she said we could really say how we really feel, no punches pulled."
"And Jim said he didn't see what that had to do with problems of democracy. And Miss Gibbs asked us and we decided that since it's the people that make the democracy, and since we are the people, our feelings count."
"That was after Elaine wrote that poem about hatred. That poem made an impression on me. I'd like to hear it again."
"Read it again, Elaine, won't you?"
"Yes," from several. "Go on, Elaine, do."
Blushing a trifle, Elaine opened her notebook, paged the leaves and began:
I dislike the hatred
That some people have in their hearts.
That some students have
When they laugh at another's slowness--
That some teachers have
When they sound off on a student
Knowing he can't sound back.
I hate the hatred that grows into wars--
Hatred that keeps the Whole World from being friends . . .
"After Elaine wrote that poem was when Miss Gibbs told us about psychology. I think psychology's the most interesting subject I ever heard! . . . Well, anyway, I remember how Miss Gibbs said that Elaine's poem had 'universality'--isn't that the word?--because all people have hate in their hearts. You have to know you have it in yourself too, and not pretend there's none of it there. Otherwise it piles up and then you sometimes do something that hurts somebody you really don't want to hurt, like your children when you have them. Or you do something rash. That's why it's better for us to learn to do something unrash about it . . ."
"Like writing about how you feel."
Miss Gibbs nodded. "That's how we came to be writing about our feelings. And talking about them . . ."
"You know, Miss Gibbs," from a brown-haired girl eagerly, "you know what makes me simply furious? My mother goes to a parent class where some lady lectures to them. Lectures are all right in their place! But this lady, you see, does all the talking all the time, and my mother just sits and listens. And if you ask me, I think psychology is right, that you just don't learn much by sitting and listening because the first thing you know, you don't want to listen. And then your mind wanders off . . . Well, what I was going to tell you was that this woman lectures on the problems of the adolescent.
But as far as my mother's concerned, absolutely none of it sinks in.
"I think what my mother and my father both need are more outlets. Someone to talk to about their feelings. Then my father wouldn't have to yell so much at me. . ."
"You said it, Jane. Let's face it!" from a towering boy all shoulders and muscle. "I get so furious too. My parents judge me before I have a chance to state my cause according to my constitutional rights . . ."
"Which was just how people felt at the time of the Revolution. Just like us."
"They felt they had a right to be heard . . ."
"So do we!"
"But," from Elaine, thoughtfully, "since we've been heard here I don't seem to have to shout so much at my sister at home. That always got me in a spot I didn't want to be in. I'd end by getting the blame. I stand up for my rights at home just as much now. Perhaps even more. But I do it differently and I get further with it. I'm not always so ready to burst . . ."
Miss Gibbs approached the matter one way. Other teachers use other approaches--through psychodrama and sociodrama, for instance, in which feelings are played out in scenes which the young people themselves make up as they go along. Teachers do such things believing that as feelings come out into the open, boys and girls are in a better position to act in more controlled ways, albeit less timidly. For they become less afraid to be aggressive when a situation demands it. They are less fearful that their normal adolescent drive toward rebellion will flare into too great and overpowering hate.
Let's go through a door marked "Science"
The group here is talking about plant foods, with the teacher, Mr. Graham, leading the discussion.
"What foods poison plants?" asks a girl, and her teeth clamp over the knuckle of her thumb.
Mr. Graham senses tension and swiftly appraises the group. Boys and girls are leaning forward, picking at nails, biting pencils, faces lowered or thrust upward with neck muscles tight.
"Hm," thinks Mr. Graham, "there's far more emotional questioning here than in the question that's been voiced."
Aloud he says, "People are interested in poisons," reflecting the interest that has become so evident.
"Yes," short Danny explodes. "Much! Much! You tell me, Mr. Graham," his voice pleading, "please, you tell? Does drink poison me?"
Chairs creak. Feet shuffle. One or two giggle nervously. Then a dark boy with eyes the soft brown of moleskin volunteers, "Remember, Mr. Graham, I asked you that same question two years ago."
"Of course, Jaime. Of course I remember."
With all that had happened before and after, Mr. Graham would never forget . . .
Always on Monday mornings, the truant officer had had to go after Jaime. He'd belonged to one of the worst gangs in the area. He'd been one of the worst of the school's "bad" boys. Stealing. Destroying property. Attacking neighborhood gangs.
And then, in Mr. Graham's room, several things had occurred.
The first, he recalled, was when the class was studying the reproductive organs of frogs.
"I'd rather be a frog than a cold fish," someone had remarked.
"But a frog's still a cold-blooded animal."
"I'd rather be a rabbit."
"What? Not a person?" Mr. Graham had questioned with a responsive twinkle in his eye.
Jaime, he remembered, had looked up, astonished that feelings were being met instead of curtailed. And he'd looked more astonished, abashed and yet at the same time grateful when Mr. Graham had added, "Many boys and girls are more interested in people than in any other animal . . . It's hard at your age, though, to talk about such things in such a large mixed group. But I'm sure there are lots of important things connected with sex and birth that you'd like to talk about. I'm available, as you know, here in this room during fifth period on Tuesdays and Thursdays to talk about that or anything else if you want to come in."
Many had.
They had come individually at first. Then several boys had come together and this nucleus had grown until ten of them were meeting regularly once a week to talk about those personal and sexual problems too intimate for a larger group. A number of girls had done the same. Some of these came in individually as well.
"I believe it's essential," said Mr. Graham, "when adolescents talk about sex in groups or have sex education of any sort offered in groups, they should also have recourse to individual conferences."
In this Mr. Graham was exceedingly wise. Group sex education may be enough for some. It may bring much needed clarification. But with some boys and girls it may set off unconscious fantasies and anxieties which call for individual attention.
In Mr. Graham's conference period which he had twice a week, he carried the same boys and girls all through school. He remained group counselor for these particular individuals. "In this way," he said, "I have time to help them work out more of their emotional problems than if I were to have them only for one or two semesters. Because I was interested, I took special training to do such counseling. Even so, I refer a boy or girl every so often for more intensive psychological help."
In Mr. Graham's room the door stood open to Jaime as to the others. But Jaime had not come.
"He doesn't trust me enough," Mr. Graham had thought. And then a second episode had occurred. It happened when the class was drawing the heart and circulatory system of the much-giggled-at rabbit.
Mr. Graham had been walking around the room. As he passed Jaime's seat he noticed that Jaime's drawing was not of a rabbit but of a nude woman in an indecent pose. Jaime looked up and their eyes met for an instant. And then the door opened and the principal came in with two visitors.
Swiftly Jaime flipped his paper over. He started to draw the rabbit's heart with trembling hand, his whole body huddling in terror.
Mr. Graham wondered: Did the boy expect that he would expose him?
The visitors wandered around and went out.
They had seen Jaime working on the same anatomical drawings as all the others. They did not know that on the other side of the paper lay an obscene, hidden thing.
Mr. Graham had guarded Jaime's secret. Nor did he scold him for it when the visitors had left. He granted Jaime the emotional immunity that these children must have when they expose themselves. To be neither betrayed nor condemned. For then and then only can they continue to bring out what may be preying on their minds.
When the class was over, Jaime stayed on. "Thank you, Mr. Graham," he gulped.
There was an asking look about him. And then, quite unexpectedly, the question had come. "Mr. Graham? Will drink poison me?"
That had been the beginning. Into Mr. Graham's counseling periods on Tuesdays and Thursdays Jaime came thereafter of his own volition. As he talked his story unfolded.
He was worried, terribly worried. Terribly frightened. The police had caught him with other boys in the gang's hideout. They had told his family he was "bad." But this was nothing new. It merely confirmed what his family had always labeled him.
"They are going to send me, they say, to reform school. Or to a boarding school, as strict as they can find. They are going to send me away!" And there the people would surely think he was crazy because he had bad dreams at night and would wake up screaming. They would put him in an institution for the insane.
He must stay at home. His only living brother was there now. But Jaime didn't know for how long. Just till he got well enough to go back in the Army. And when he went, he might get killed like his older brother had been killed in Korea.
And pretty soon, Jaime too would be old enough to go into the Army and he also might get hurt or killed.
What was a person to do? Only one other person besides this brother had ever loved him. The brother who'd died! His mother never had. Nor his father either. "They're always too busy quarreling. Too busy with their own troubles."
Could he get relief in drink? Relief in sex? Could he find some girl friend and take her with him and run away? He'd wanted to, but no girl really liked him.
Every weekend he'd been drinking to forget.
And so every Monday morning he'd been "sick" and "poisoned" and had been truant from school.
Two years had passed since then. Very gradually, things had grown better. Several Sunday nights Mr. Graham had used the address of a new hide-out furtively given him with Jaime's plea that he come there and get him home so he could be sober before Monday morning. Then he'd put Jaime on his own. And Jaime had responded to the trust put in him.
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