|
Leo Buscaglia, Living, Loving and
Learning, Part 3
There is tremendous hope for all of us, but somewhere along the line
you’ve got to learn to love. I think many of these things are inside
of us, and nothing that I’m going to say to you is going to be
startlingly new. What you are going to find is that somebody is going to
have nerve enough to stand up and say it, and maybe ,therefore, release
it in you so you can say, "That’s the way I feel, too, and
is it so wrong to feel this way?"
It’s very interesting, but five years ago when I started talking of
love, I was very lonely, indeed. I remember, and there are some people
in this audience who were in that audience, when I stood up with a
colleague from another university at a discussion about behavior
modification versus affect. After I had been there screaming and crying
about love, this gentleman turned to me and said, "Buscalia, you
are totally irrelevant." I think I have this singular distinction
of being the only human being I know who is irrelevant. And it’s
groovy! But it’s not so lonely now because more people are turning
toward affect and studying it.
One of the most crucial developments for me was finding Leonard
Silberman’s book, Crisis in the Classroom. If you haven’t
read it, do, it’s fantastic. It probably will be one of the most
significant books in education. It’s already on the bestseller list.
Anyone who’s interested in children must read Silberman’s book,
including parents. It should be available for everybody. This book is
the result of a three-year Carnegie Grant given to Leonard Silberman, a
great sociologist and a great psychologist, to find out what the state
of American education is today. He concludes that considering that in
America education is for all, we’re doing pretty damned good job when
it comes to reading and writing, arithmetic and spelling. We’re pretty
good at that. But we fail miserably in teaching individuals how to be
human beings. Al we have to do is look around us and we can see this.
The accent is definitely on the wrong syllable.
In my first year at USC I was teaching a class. It’s an amazing
thing – I imagine you feel the same thing I do – but you pick up
vibrations from your audience. Things happen between you and your
audience if you are talking to them and not at them.
back to index -> |
