Question:
The art teacher at the college is level is a teacher first. If he is
an artists first it is even worse because it means he does not want to
teach and will be even more abusive.
As a teacher the art teacher is a government employee. Even at private
institutions he remains the representative of the authority of the
institution in his relation to students.
Students are usually half the art teacher's age. If, on the other
hand, he or she is in his 30's or 20's, it is worse, because it means
he or she is too young to be able to handle authority and will
compensate by becoming brittle and authoritarian.
In any case, because of the student's age, economic circumstance, and
status within the institution, the student stands in a relation to the
art teacher as the child to the parent, or the enlisted man to the
officer, or the employer to the manager.
The teacher, of art or anything else, can only establish his authority
by cruelty. This is done by emotional abuse or some sort of rudeness.
The hidden dynamic here is that the student cannot treat the teacher
as the teacher has treated him or her because the teacher would then
become vicious and commit an even more abusive action. Teacher's in
the vast majority of high school and college environments love to
fight and look for any sign of independence or resistance from the
students as a signal to prove to themselves, by proving to the
student, the fact of their authority.
This may not be the way it has to be in human society but it is the
way it is, and in order to function as a teacher at the secondary or
tertiary level in virtually all educational systems, this is the
personality structure the teacher must assume, if he did not have it
in before entering the system.
If you look carefully at the implicit images of child abuse floating
around in the West, you will see an exact match between them and the
behavior of high school and college teachers toward students. sadism,
imbalance of power.
One more concrete example of this is if you contradict such an art
teacher, his first reaction will not be to address your ideas on their
own terms, i.e., as ideas, but to attack you personally. College
teachers are not on a very level intellectually, so profound or
complex discussion threatens them, even if such was not intended by
the student. The art teacher's reaction to this threat is to
personally attack the student. This takes the form of saying the
student is emotionally immature or has some other dispositional or
intentional defect.
The essence of the abusiveness of this reaction can be seen when you
imagine the student's response to such remarks by the teacher. Can the
student respond in kind? What would be the outcome? You can see from
this the basic and persistent perversity of the present educational
system.
Answer:
