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You begin by pointing out who's here with people just where there and then and then I'll interview him for 15 minutes and then for the next hour we'll hear from everybody. I have two questions for the radio and then the last 15 minutes or so it is point that moves in to meet the other person that I never sent and I can only imagine myself sitting there and going your route knowing
that it's going to be fun. Summer would be a great point. So why was it in court. I'm not
walking the road to win. Who was that it was just a history teacher to become a socialist. I wrote
back to the person who was chairman of that and to come back. She never wrote back to me like it was a poor to come in with so little preparation. So I'm very welcomed in this way and that long career as a student and teacher psychology but most of which was spent as for three years and then it have it to four years ago and
from teaching kept writing books and have experience with ministration perience being a high school student Grahams to the public system and then to graduate you know something about the ministration something in problems of teaching but at the college level and who teach and sort of ending or the school in question. This is a small private boarding school and show situation.
And so our experience with things with the riches or things with one that sounds like a product that I know one of the things everything one of Robert whites Well in terms of individual was thinking about the other end of the log an opportunity to talk about their lives I realized that of course I took one of the things I know is going to be able to pull him aside and see what's left next.
You can call them that. I thought about what you lost last question. Where were you born and what sort of person. You don't because you just couldn't exhaust yourself. You do just that. I would characterize
a human interest who happened to wander into or you didn't. And as for the humanistic colleges interested in teaching this stuff you know or was interested in but because that sort of so much of the pleasure you find in teaching something one of the questions that we're interested in here is what what makes a good teacher but one of the ways of going about that when I ask you what your interest in teaching it all stimulated by teachers of your own. Yes.
First one of course which was this one. And so it was just creation. It was a creation. You just listen and doing that kind of thing
completely foreign and personal. All the features of the abstract and more or less the kind of history anyway. For most of them think that perhaps so.
It's interesting you mention her and wished her well. But your feel was history. How did that happen. All this having to do with science these were the two peaks. Well the top is the dream I don't think anyone has. This is really premature but I'm thinking and certainly much of good literature is stories about people and history whether it's the length and shadow of a great moon or not it's really involved and then you're
coming with us and it's sort of you can say historian but your degree in your early teaching history and then your work in psychology was individuals like history like history of National History is from one of them one of the choices that you had a masters in history and you want to teach history what history what American history which is special. Especially when their social intellectual economic history and he was a pioneer of this history influence that history really about so much that
I did meet up with a psychologist and use it to ensure contemporary later that he was some influence but more than that there was going to I was meeting but having written. Once you get through with it and see that a great you is going in this was new and strange to me that started this war. But I think the main course much relation we don't know what to do or was just
teaching history to do something about. Oh no for your own question but your own progress through school been not eventful but untroubled is possible. How can you go through school. You know even bother me.
Great things. When you were saying that all that was going on with the students that you was sort of on the other side of history or history was that was what made you think that perhaps that was something which I don't that was in the late 20s when you were teaching. That was when you got your message in 63. I don't question that comes to mind was there some sort of change or was that what student life was more turbulent than it had been when you were an undergrad. That's the kind of thing I was wondering whether it struck you know your all the things going on which I really didn't go through with that discontinuity. I don't think I went through.
So for me it was sort of a discovery. For me this was a good student who are very good you spend a lot of times good to be good and that fair that
you know. This is again from yesterday but I remember your saying something about in your family the tradition was law and if you were fortunate to have an older brother who took that assignment did you go through school. You must of he was old. He was six years old on your own the sort of requirements for you to do well in school. Right up against putting so much pressure to get him to do
and but the expectation that you know you have your extracurricular interests in college and then I start my stuff. And so
in this very Cambridge of course several steps to do so I think it was terribly important for sure but to give up is to go into the work and organise that with
your interest. Will it. Which is not cool
and different but also. Just imagine what it would be and I would suppose in this position you would
actually show the best in the same way you could help it. Make up this system that you are growing up with. Where there are other systems you go through it. Rather being a model and then that he was a model
and he was also terrible. Us what parents Foreman. Home of course to be that way. So sometimes he would go up to law school. Also very much of that changed. I think you know writing about living with Asian it sets him up for changes for me. When we come in and say I mean try this.
If you understood the question but really it's something about him talking about being a humanist and being interested in music and being an organist. The question came to you how do you define humanism. And does it include something trans personal something beyond what might ordinarily be considered humanism something like. Do you mean those who saw the method. That's what developed this professional use of scientific methods and problems of people interested
in this as something to do. So who wants to do this study. And he talks about the door and mission to continue. And all the problems of development going forward this way one person one thing to do is
to take just one that you can read of interest in the common person and what's to do with people who haven't done it for the West. When you are placed myself in that mission with you. Just contact us institutions so that all that
takes is greater wisdom to speculate. You will sort of question that when you were talking about that story of the student of lives. Well another thing that cause one interested in the in the trans personal and sort of the Father is what we're talking about. But you're saying what you do about secular humanism. So when a couple questions like that it's really goes back to your greeting or an
impression of a lot and I wonder if two things. Who do you follow and that was supportive or someone you could model yourself after when you were just related to that. Well what kind of support you get for the very first four years but that to marry was it was or was it.
The operation doesn't take another dozen of worms of course. So we got over it. So it's possible you could see who we are. What sort of a guy was an Indian and never really heard anyone describe them.
Well everyone agrees that he's a very charismatic person and this was a problem because charisma how so conspicuous. This was because of because of the kind of vitality she's got a lot to do and want to create thinking about. You pick up the subject again because for the person. Yes. Make you feel you thinking was going right there thinking that something happened and coming out of that.
Also there were some of your peers that instinct was no never was also. So all Russians were Russian and so was she.
Why are you like I don't like the rain when you play on the line to do it when you can't hear it it kills me because you were saying that humanistic psychology
is on the fringe of psychology proper And if that's so then it's probably also true that humanistic education is on the verge of education branch. Do you have ideas thoughts of problems relating students personal lives with the content of education as taught in the schools. Of course sometimes no human interests are on the fringe of our society. You about this because the subject that I was teaching. Do you know that or close to those who do. You can't teach this in a way that isn't. This is a universal genius of
any subject without subject it seemed to me that the student should be doing some of the same thing with history and not just hearing but do it themselves in courses to give them an option and to write about their own if they want is always an option that didn't make that requirement to do it. So that's one of the things you could do that of course responsibility to respond to and I think that it would have been right there for that kind of
communication with responding to it which is the plight of teachers students and the other thing is to study subjects that have been made previously by myself and others and put them in a forum where there was absolutely no interpretation recorded interviews and the tape recorder giving it. So just that no one to ask. Trying to coach just a student responded to that and then some of them were so
great about these wives of the same thing. And this was. So much more. Well
this was before you walk or courses or perhaps course assistant. And so it was understood that I used to write quite a sum to Britain to come here and there of course you're in THE SITUATION just how much is sometimes very little and much more so. And then in a few cases
things that would raise questions and I would like very much to talk this way with. I really don't remember exactly. On the whole of it but I was a student you're invited to the public really haven't you. I did write it but it was one of the most important and best written did in school. One byproduct was I think I won't be going to therapy with you which wasn't possible. But I really appreciate that opportunity and also talking with you about it and women. Discussion of that paper will be considered right.
Oh no no no no I would guess that if you but some of them think so. When the question comes to Mona I know you were talking. There were a number of people that you personally studied over a long period and I think this again was at an earlier
meeting you were saying that it's been useful to them in terms of just learning about themselves through the process of being study and question. Again it's related to your situation in the context of the psychology department or whatever it was. And that is with your title or your label was clinical psychology that was that your peers he was in clinical psychology. Was it difficult for people to differentiate the long term study of their lives from from some from a therapeutic. Interest or act I think it could look very well and I think in a way that people who are going to be the first
to get help may not know that. But if you read between them. So it may be that needing to do this was one of them you were saying earlier was just a comment of human concerns to some extent being on the periphery of our society and it seems to me sometimes that that kind of self-knowledge that to some of the people that you studied over long is difficult is not so. Legitimate pursuit short of therapy this homo being curious about yourself you can make possible for people to take their own lives as a phenomenon of interest.
Some of that's that scene is not legitimate unless you're well somehow. If you're all right then you don't think about it that well in the course of time we've heard so if you didn't think of your sick but you were very to have a chance to talk if they were trying to validate what comes against your judgment of people you know. And those times and this was a good thing. We're going
to have a child no question. We got my way. There it goes back far enough where her own home was much more difficult to do right. Right. But there was a difference between her and we thought this was over and
we didn't try to. That much fuss about. But the more we allow them to know that we were on the side of home. So he was special. But then the lesson we never seem to spend the time and his back was to remember. And so I think I think that perhaps of time of course pressure from school to be considered. Question to
one of them. Well just to speak to the music that you mentioned we're both experienced in their own way. The pressure of pride to be interesting and younger brother and sister both of us have to do that. So this was one thing it was morally right. And my mother got so exhausted. So I was the world crept up to
her so she got exhausted in the end. And there's a gun to my own right and so do other things. You're thinking of what can go on. Because you
know what. Person who wrote a very distinguished book or
magical for the child in the next edition. I was trying to do that. Do you think.
So I don't know. But of course some people don't have practical because they're going to be recommended for the next practice.
Who is right that you are somehow to break the constant competition that people are doing against what somebody from the west and you are so individual izing the process which is to end human right in principle that the running of institutions begins to become a mission to see who was cooperating may stop comparing. Just saying that but think. You know that's the problem with education or with being in the institution
but I think that you know I want to talk of course in the history of education and sort of discourage because so much of the ideas that Martin Martin and I do think you're right. Why don't you start with sort of conducting education with rote and you know what. 1
0 0 0 I think it's possible that your whole range.
Prerequisite the rest of the people of course you don't. Practical anyway backstopping something to be able
to be created in the sphere of course to be taught and how the teaching ministry and it grows because of things like recommendations for instance during a time when I was a. There was an increase of graduate students for undergraduates to exactly the opposite of what you do right.
Every one of these things and you know because it seemed right to actually help every one of them would bring a pile of papers and recommendations and be just as well. But these good incessantly and so I think you have to conduct successful war in ministry if you're going to stay and you give it to people. The
question is if people are going to competition is it not important to provide an information ranking. Students can compare themselves and know whether or not they're working up to standard. People like that are helpful in providing it I think. You probably don't compare
to the world that hold that hope to so doing. I know it's a compromise of some sort. You know when
you know you know this is why no one says I'm out. I just one person. I mean I don't know. What happened.
And so that and and then of course was sent. So here we have a graduate student and an interesting thing here is that we were at that point of sufficient individuation so we thought this was just a great joke. Look at I was quite low and so Rosenzweig invention was really just
about the pocket. Did you know that by this time we knew that this was just this. We knew what each of us was or become but when we were not a thing to rethink known and mean something very funny. It does something to the school. Quite a lot of young people
were put off in business and you should go along with everyone. Do you think you will vote. REPORTER What
was that. From the intro there are people who don't. But I was talking earlier about providing opportunities for people to the country
and have that sort of thing. We think that for children in schools school would kind of provide this kind of thing go out in nature it would be a good idea for them to provide that in the school. So much more.
I would think
that one of the core go so much of it or another one were showing off. So individual could you like to work
out that you mentioned. Remember the mission wasn't supposed to. The question was was only placed under thirty third of his class at West Point. Didn't he do quite well with West Point. But so much to question
just the things that you are. Thought about it.
And just lately I've discovered that I was a chauvinist for a textbook in purpose for what was in circulation and just between the four or the critical letters telling me to do something you know but look and look. And I think
it was a very little correction that stuck to me. And so I think for you to put that question. So it's very important that this is recent
and we see how tough this was. But of course look at our conceptions. But what it is it gives a different conception. This is a very basic position that expresses
exploratory So it's very important in development respect. Are you able to do to reduce the effect that things happen in a very rough sort of different for the men and women of men and women are expected to do this is very different. So that women
would know. Well the downgrading of the degrees I think
was just wonderful during that time where my car was teaching close to where missions are so what you might call the parental degrees and upward mobility as if to me it's unpleasant to me or nothing at all to get a sense of this kind of pressure because I had a feeling that your children and a real interest in this subject matter and whatever they were doing got their attention. What kind of a steppingstone what kind of
this just crowded out all the meaning of education that we were fighting about something destructive. So I couldn't be more happy people think. It's so hard to grow in the media during Christmas and it didn't have to do with that correlation. Probably just too insignificant. Everybody was working but we certainly have to change basic teaching in terms that were going to come to
reading this. Oh I don't think with higher education no. I think I was thinking of school classes being exposed to Agent so I think for higher education there is still a bookish that's almost unavoidable somewhere that you know very
well there were academic environment. There are indirect ways of expressing a great many. The way that you convince yourself is to read the professional journals where somebody is absolutely brawling in the gutter and
then fighting over it. You see where the academic coming up but I think it makes it much easier. Temper tantrums because you have so many opportunities. You are well and I think rather so because this is something that is rather temperamental and I don't think that you know for instance with the present swing that's
so much about what I think. Most of it and if you remember you were put in the ring with pretentious name. I think that was a position so that to an extent sure. Rational people don't just think it's a good thing to do
that. You're just so sure of that. Like that but I think it's very very vital if you want
these courses of anger. Socially it's very important to try to understand people. But then you probably would still go to is it simply that they don't go out in such irrational ways and I don't think that psychoanalysis is to that question.
Do you have any specific help children other than what goes on in the classroom. Can bridge the gap between what's going on in school and what's really happening to them outside. Well you would hope that they get that kind of thing that's going on in the school that the school is modernize it gets out and it's going to be. But when we consider that what goes on in the classroom has certain human interaction direct you to it that
the subject isn't. For instance creating a teacher class with consideration of the job knowing where and it's not just that the preparation for that.
But I think I think you do something if you are if you are given the morning prayer. No one person can be prepared to rise to the street. Where has the time. We feel remiss if I didn't ask you about
how you came upon it and how that sort of concern emerged. Well then you're in and I was very aware that there is an especially from sarcoidosis secular motivations derived from very few resources to do major in streams. You know this was a great mistake in the kinds of things doing it thinking about it that way. So I always thought that I must do something about the theory of motivation.
And I never got to it and that was. And yet I was planning to end up by writing a book person that was going to be one of the topics. So I've been a psychologist and learning something or 20 or 30 years you see the speed at which I think I have the good fortune to have been suddenly ordered to stay at home and rest this way six weeks or so for the first time having an opportunity to interrupt your thinking more. Just writing. Motivation. Associations just come flying out the next day it was
a little thing so that this notion of competence or through you. You can do that lightly. So this was just to fashion living creature rather than
recipient impressions from conditions or rather than exploring your organism to establish some kind of mastery over the course. Educational. So I was thinking what collection and publishers have gotten
statements from this disastrous to say let's do it. And the rest suddenly find myself. Or
no. This has to do with their
experiment where you have some meeting people level and and it seems to me that one can overlook the fact that they have come away from this feeling them so much change and how complete that is open to question. I would think it would prove to be true many of the rest of the marriage didn't change that. But something having to do with their orientation.
Doing so when there were constructive force they can also be destructive. Also this question comes up how revolutionary forces coming
about. No you couldn't. So I think in general question but not so much revolutions. Yes
it might. But rather to most of them say as you write. I think that. We can do to me like that.
Series
Sunday Forum
Episode
Robert White: The Other End Of The Log
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-83xsjkmc
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Description
Series Description
Sunday Forum is a weekly show presenting recordings of public addresses on topics of public interest.
Description
Series of five programs of informal discussions with outstanding educators. Robert White, Emeritus Professor Of Psychology at Harvard University.
Created Date
1973-04-18
Genres
Event Coverage
Topics
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
01:46:23
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 73-0107-07-01-002 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
Duration: 01:46:00
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Citations
Chicago: “Sunday Forum; Robert White: The Other End Of The Log,” 1973-04-18, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-83xsjkmc.
MLA: “Sunday Forum; Robert White: The Other End Of The Log.” 1973-04-18. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-83xsjkmc>.
APA: Sunday Forum; Robert White: The Other End Of The Log. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-83xsjkmc