Sniper inoculations #2: "D is for Blame"

 

I’m getting aggravated with my teenage clients. In old geezer fashion, I’ve been ha­rangu­ing them with “In my day,” “when I was growing up” lectures, inspired by one phe­nom­enon: The majority of them – poor and average students to STEM school smarties – blame their low or disap­pointing grades on their teach­ers. These kids cite teachers’ incom­petence – not know­ing their subject; their inability to explain things clearly; inco­her­ent and circumstantial lectures; failure to understand the computer tech­nology; vin­dictiveness which per­se­cutes one innocent student in a class. I let them know that from first day of first grade to last day senior year (mid-late 1950s to end of the ’60s), to the best of my recollection neither I nor any students I was familiar with had ever blamed a teacher for our struggles. The only complaint I remember hear­ing was that a midterm or final exam covered some material that was not taught in class or readings.

This is a triple sickness: externalization of responsibility generally; an almost delusional denial of the reality that teachers can, for the most part, teach; and what smells of a kind of narcis­sistic contempt for them. What happened to these teens that they’ve come to “blame the world”? Where they have lost the ability to notice or assume adults’ compe­tence? Where they see adults as less respectable than their peers? Sociol­ogists might indict tv shows such as The Simp­sons or Family Guy, or the degenerated state of Amer­ican culture and politics. But this de-enchantment and dethroning must start at home. Something about “the people in the environment”* has robbed these children of a child’s heart and trust.

Though a stretch, I believe we are looking at a seed of personality disorder. The teens’ atti­tudes I hear are inflexible, though not necessarily global: They can sometimes appre­ciate another teacher. While sample size is small, my impression is that it is not the teach­er’s ignorance or incompetence, but rather his or her personality – rigidity or lack of humor or lack of empathy for prob­lematic teens’ individuality – that ignites the stu­dents’ con­demnation. If so, mustn’t this speak to a family-grown heightened sensi­tivity to unfair treat­ment, to “the suppression of justified rage in childhood”?** As the child can’t successfully challenge the entrenched dynamics of home, he has come to grow a pro­tec­tive, possibly a projective, emotional philosophy. This is a rudiment of personality disorder. I have been able to help teenagers with a variety of problems. But I have yet to make a dent in their omniscience about the failures of their teachers, who are stand-ins for their parents.

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* Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth. “But through a variety of adverse influences, a child may not be permitted to grow according to his individual needs and possibilities. Such unfavorable conditions are too manifold to list here. But, when summarized, they all boil down to the fact that the people in the environment are too wrapped up in their own neuroses to be able to love the child, or even to conceive of him as the particular individual he is; their attitudes toward him are determined by their own neurotic needs and responses. In simple words, they may be dominating, overprotective, intimidating, irritable, overexacting, overindulgent, erratic, partial to other siblings, hypocritical, indifferent, etc. It is never a matter of just a single factor, but always the whole constellation that exerts the untoward influence on a child’s growth” (p. 18).

** Alice Miller’s explanation for violence.