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| Category: Alexander Technique |
Date published: December 5, 2003 |
The Missing Ingredient in Education
by Robert Rickover
"Suppose a man starts out to reach a certain destination and comes to a place where the road branches into two. Not knowing the way, he takes the wrong road of the two and gets lost. He asks the way of someone he meets and is told to go straight back to the crossroads and take the other road, which will lead him directly to the place he wants to reach. What should we say if we heard that the man had gone back to the crossroads as directed, but had there concluded that he knew better after all than his adviser, had taken again his old road, and again got lost, and had done this thing not once or twice, but over and over again? Still more, what should we say if we heard that he was worrying dreadfully because he kept getting lost and seemed no nearer to getting to his destination?"
What would you say about this man? Does he remind you of anyone you know?
The story can be found in F. Matthias Alexander's book "Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual", first published in 1923. Alexander is best known for the teaching method he developed, known today as the Alexander Technique.
Alexander goes on to write: "I can see the reader's look of skepticism as he reads this and assures himself that he, at any rate, could not be guilty of (this) crime..." Then, talking about his own teaching experience, "...this is more or less what happens in the case of every pupil, even of those who are accounted the most intelligent, the most highly educated, the most scientifically trained and this serves to strengthen my conviction that the principles underlying present methods of education are erroneous. Indeed it would seem that our education systems, our methods of training in scientific and professional spheres, have tended actually to cultivate and establish the defect to which I have referred."
What is the precise nature of the defect Alexander is talking about? And why is it so important?
Alexander is focusing on the balance between the desire to do - "volition" and the ability to check that desire, which he labels "inhibition". Volition is the act of responding to a stimulus: the phone rings and you immediately get up to answer it. Inhibition is the refusal to respond to a stimulus: a car cuts you off on the freeway and you refrain from trying to get revenge. In Alexander's words, "volition is what we intend to do" and inhibition "what we wish to hold in check, what we wish to prevent."
(Alexander was writing before Sigmund Freud's work was as well known as it is today, and before the word "inhibition" acquired the distinctly negative meaning of an unhealthy suppression of thoughts and emotions. Alexander used the word quite differently, more in accord with its original meaning: simply not doing what you don't want to do.)
In the story, the poor man was unable to inhibit taking the wrong turn over and over again - his belief in his own "rightness" overwhelmed the accumulating body of evidence that he was repeatedly making the wrong decision.
We can all think of people who suffer greatly because they make the same bad decisions time after time. Often this pattern is quite obvious: the teenager who repeatedly makes a bad choice despite facing the same negative consequences each time. Or the person who continues to drink and drive despite repeated accidents, fines and license suspensions.
Alexander believed that this defect is most insidious, and in many ways most harmful for our health and wellbeing, in the ways we think (or don't think) about how our bodies function - our posture and movement patterns. Like Alexander, and like other teachers of the Alexander Technique today, I've found that helping my students refrain from what they know will be harmful to them is one of the most challenging aspects of my work.
It is often fairly easy to teach a student precisely how he or she can make a change in an old pattern of thought - a change that results in improved physical functioning, one which the student can readily observe. But it often takes quite awhile to get the student to actually make this change on their own on any sort of consistent basis, despite their strong desire to improve. Saying "no" to their old, established patterns of thought (which clearly have not worked well in the past and clearly are not working well in the present) generally requires quite a bit of help and reinforcement from the teacher.
Teaching students how to say "no" to a habitual way of thinking is simply not part of our education system, according to Alexander.
One of his students, the famous American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey, agreed and felt that Alexander's method offered a practical solution. He wrote the introductions to three of Alexander's books, including "Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual", and frequently referred to Alexander's work in his own writings.
In his introduction to Alexander's third book "Use of the Self" Dewey says: "It (the technique of Mr. Alexander) bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities."
It's hard to imagine a more powerful endorsement. And it comes from a man who continues to be highly respected in the field of education.
Perhaps it's time to investigate just how the core ideas of Alexander's method can be brought into our schools - so that we're not simply telling kids things like "Stop disrupting the class" or "Just say no", but actually giving them the tools they need to refrain from harmful adictions.
RESOURCES:
Information on ordering Alexander's books, and a great many other books about his work and the Alexander Technique, can be found at The Alexander Technique Bookstore
Information about the connection between Dewey and Alexander can be found at The John Dewey and F. Matthias Alexander Homepage
The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique contains a wealth of information about Alexander and the Alexander Technique.
Robert Rickover teachers the Alexander Technique in Lincoln, Nebraska and in Toronto, Canada.
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