Nature of Logic and Perception

Nature of Logic and Perception thought she hated me. It was the either/or logic of a child. Either my grade school teacher liked me, or hated me. or, to be more honest, either I had to be my teacher's pet, or the most despised child in the entire class. Since the former was not the case, clearly the latter scenario was the only possible alternative. Additionally, everyone in the class, it seemed, teased me that I was hated by my teacher.

I did not notice that this was a common taunt that year -- Mrs. X was well-known for flying into a rage if a student had not done his or her homework, or wasn't sitting quietly when the bell sounded the beginning of the day. Clearly, the mocking 'oh, you're in trouble now,' only applied to me. Classic bandwagon mentality -- when everyone is saying something, it must be true -- and only in relationship to one's own life. I took every criticism of Mrs.

X's, because the criticisms came so frequently, as a personal slight. Her red marks upon my subtraction drills demonstrated incontrovertibly that she thought I was dumb. Her hushing me during student assemblies proved she was singling me out, as other students were also talking. Every single example was evidence of a larger truth, of her unremitting hatred of my self, my character, everything I stood for. On particularly bad days, I was sure that she selected assignments and tasks that I would be poor at.

In my limited, student's life perception, I was the center of the universe. I was the center of both of our universes -- hers and mine. She got up every morning, asking how she could torment me, and I got up every morning, quaking in fear of her reign.

Because a teacher seems in the child's perception of the world to be so focused on ordering and disciplining the child's life, and the teacher controls so many facets of a young child's life, perhaps I can be excused of thinking her obsessed with myself, and omnipotent.

Eventually, I realized not simply that teachers are human -- that they go to the bathroom, and function in all the ways 'normal' adults do -- but I later learned, from discussing the matter with my fellow classmates that most of them felt Mrs. X had been particularly cruel as a grade school teacher. I also learned that most of the students from the class felt that she had not been particularly cruel towards myself -- all of them felt particularly persecuted during her reign! Critical thinking is objective.

However, the perceptions of a child, and even of a more mature student seldom have this objective perspective in the classroom. Also, one is always dealing with imperfect information, as one does not know about what is going on in the life of the teacher as well as one's own life. Later, I heard Mrs. X had been suffering a particularly difficult year from a personal perspective, and perhaps had been inflicting her own problems upon her class. My own perception was limited and.