Well, it has been a while since we last spoke. I was teaching! It is an endeavor that takes time, especially if one aspires to do it well. I had a great term at Bennington College this spring, and plan to write more in future posts about my course on the psychology of electronic communication technology (entitled, in my usual grandiose fashion, "Thinking with the World Mind.")
But, when we last spoke, I was mourning the death of my dear friend and mentor, Developmental Psychology. DP, as we called him or her (like all great ideas, he/she was beyond gender), was accidentally killed off by one Miss Watson, a kindergarten teacher I know here in western Massachusetts, during this last school year. It seems Miss Watson, a new enthusiastic teacher who apparently had never heard of DP, was just trying to do her job. But her job, as she understand it, is to get children ready to learn. Children in Miss Watson's kindergarten class spend a lot of time sitting in their seats, and not much time playing or walking around. You see, they're getting ready for first grade. Miss Watson knows that first graders spend a lot of time sitting in their seats, so she tries to help her kindergarteners get ready for first grade by making them spend most of their time in their seats. (This is the logic of getting ready to ride a two-wheeled bike by riding a two-wheeled bike, or getting ready to eat by eating; preparation is simplistically equated with the thing being prepared for.)
Enter the little girl I'll call Maria (in honor of Maria Montessori; see last post), whose most cherished possession is her teddy bear we'll call Donald (in honor of Donald Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst who wrote so movingly about teddy bears as transitional objects). Maria is in kindergarten, but she is not really all that ready to sit in her seat all day long. As DP once said (but not to Miss Watson), "All children develop at different rates," and Maria is one of those who is developing a little more slowly when it comes to sitting still for long periods of time. Maria is also having a tough time at home: her parents are unemployed, and her older sister is chronically ill, and family strain is at an all-time high. So Donald, her beloved teddy bear, is a little more necessary than he was a few months ago. As DP once taught us, "Children's emotional and intellectual development are much more intertwined than those domains are in adults" so we should know that children like Maria will learn better and more efficiently if they are allowed to cuddle with their transitional objects in kindergarten: they think more clearly when they feel safe, especially when they are having a difficult period in their emotional lives.
But Miss Watson needs to get these children ready for first grade. So she has a classroom rule: "NO TOYS." Children are not allowed to play with toys they bring from home. It is a distraction from the all-important task of getting ready for first grade. So, since Miss Watson defines Donald as a "toy" (a definition that would horrify Winnicott, but Miss Watson has probably never heard of Winnicott) she takes him away. Maria, of course, freaks out, and tries to rescue him from the cubby where he has been banished. So Miss Watson gives Maria a time out, and then another, and then another. But she will not capitulate on the "NO TOYS" rule. Maria is eventually referred to the school psychologist to be worked up for a possible diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. Perhaps Maria needs to work on speech pragmatics with the speech and language pathologist? Miss Watson may never have heard of Winnicott, or Developmental Psychology, but she has heard of Asperger's Syndrome. Miss Watson will do whatever she can to help Maria get ready to learn.
At this point, DP, who was suffering from neglect, and deep despair over the fate of all the children he/she had tried to help over the years, and sheer exhaustion at having to explain him/herself over and over again, gave up the ghost. DP just up and died, like Mr. Bojangles' dog. He/she is buried in an unmarked grave in western Masachusetts, but he/she will be remembered fondly by his/her devotees until they, too, up and die, leaving Miss Watson and her ilk in charge of the world's children. Sorry, kids: it seems you're really just little grownups after all.
