Goddard Revisited: Cautionary Words from a Student-Teacher to a Teacher-Student Against the Dangers of an Uncritical Pedagogy

The following essay has been written with you in mind. It is the most cogent summary of my criticisms of Goddard to date but is far from complete. I have left out issues that seemed less relevant to your present lived experience. Other matters have been glossed over. My past few days have been spent immersed enough in pedagogical theory that the deficiencies I have been exposed to thus far stand out like I do on a football field. Due to the limitations of time, space and energy I have chosen to write in a directed, rambling manner over the course of a brief sitting. The structure of this piece will resemble the illegitimate hybrid of a formal paper and a personal letter.

The operative Goddardian myth of a student centered environment hides the ugly truth that suppression of shadow only leads to the demonization of its projection. As an outsider to the most prevalent dogmas within the IBA community who has been alienated for expressing dissent I am in a unique position to explore the ways in which attempts to escape the inherited structures within mainstream academia have led to a denial of the oppressive hegemonies by which the once radical has become sectarian. (freire 37)

The advisor must approach his role with humility. As Freire has said, "To affirm [commitment to the oppressed] but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom -- which must be given to (or imposed) on people -- is to retain the old ways." (60-1) One cannot create authentic dialogue by imposing onto an other some value or perspective that does not arise out of his own experience. (180) Freirian rhetoric aside, caution is advised during the initial stages of packet submission and response.

If in the beginnings of interaction you provide...

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...disclosure and willingness to re-evaluate your approach.

*1*As someone who was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder I found myself again and again in environments and relationships where I was misunderstood, where my voice was excluded from decisions about my future and where my natural intellectual curiosity was stifled, so let it not be said that I am approaching this situation as a member of a majority against a minority. Rather, as an intellectual who values many traditional Western modes of engaging with source material I am a minority among a minority-made-majority; a conceivably more dangerous group because it identifies dissension with the voice of its own oppressor.

*2*It is good for people of different minds to learn to understand the world in different ways to the degree that they are capable, but less us not play down the neurological differences either.