I like the way the fictional Don Juan says it to Carlos in "A Separate Reality":
"Don't make yourself available."
Here, if I understand Castaneda's intent, the "self" of "yourself" is what Robert Bly ( a wonderful poet who should have steered clear of "guru-ism") calls "the self in solitude." The part of you that you must not allow to be drained away or violated, even by your closest intimates.
Police officers I have known ( and I used to teach a class in writing crime-scene reports that was nearly all cops) practice a similar professional decorum: the uniform makes the arrest, not the man or the woman. But when they relax at a bar or club, all that gets temporarily packed away. Until some drunk pulls a gun or begins to brutalize another customer. Even then, the secret, un-uniformed cop may defer.
People sometimes expect me to be able to spell every word in an English dictionary on demand. I admit I used to spell pretty well, until I read thirty years of hastily typed freshman papers. But no professional can function flawlessly all the time.
Look at Scooter Libby, a master of mendacity and spin.
But "professionals", for some reason, usually carry more weight when they utter an opinion or exhibit their proclivities, as well as incurring harsher criticism. "He's just an old drunk who staggered in here" is the reaction to a haggard man in a stained raincoat who is sloshing spirits at the end of the bar.
But the man with the unknotted tie at the other end of the bar who's losing his balance while swilling Scotch gets: "Why, isn't that Doctor Stalwart, M.D.? I sure wouldn't want him to operate on my pancreas in that condition!!"
Teachers are routinely under even greater scrutiny. Someone said that a teacher, to be effective, has to be a bit of a lover, though a discreet, hands-off type of lover, and I agree. If you care about your subject, fine-- that's indispensible. But a teacher has to care whether his students are "getting it" also.
My wife, a Math teacher, and one of the best who ever lived, often shares her discomfort over how resistant her students seem to the simple absorption of basic Math principles, even though those students may be trying to learn ( something many of my students didn't manage). She's constantly finding ways to make the mysteries of Math more accessible to them.
God-- if I had only had her as a teacher, I might not have gotten that "D" in Physics.
But the private life of a teacher ( in the early part of the twentieth century, female teachers in some US states could not even be married-- incredible as this sounds, my wife's mother, an elementary school teacher, had to quit her job in 1925 because she got married) generally shouldn't be advertised, K and D, probably for the same reason you don't write "Kathleen Donovan" ( I'm just making this name up-- I know that probably isn't your name) under your picture on StudioEight.
I'm all for individual rights; the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, if it weren't so recklessly ignored by some politicians and "leaders", is the best thing we have, and we must cling to it and extol it.
But that vague and shadowy thing-- reputation-- can make or break a professional.
Thomas H. Ginsburg, nominated by Ronald Reagan as a Supreme Court Justice, admitted that he had smoked marijuana in the 60's and 70's, and was disqualified. The decision was not made on the basis of his judicial credentials, but on the basis of "proscribed" extra-professional activity.
The current Bush nominee, Harriet Miers, withdrew yesterday for what might be deemed "professional" reasons. But both Ginsburg and Miers didn't make it, Ginsburg for smoking marijuana.
http://www.theocracywatch.org/constitut ... r17_05.htm
As my younger friends sometimes say, "Go figure."
A teacher assumes a good deal of responsibility. When I began to work for the State of California in 1972, I had to go first to the Sheriff's station , be fingerprinted, and sign a loyalty oath. That oath certified that I would not, "attempt or advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or violence . . ." among other things. No signing of the oath, no job. It was that simple.
A famous case involving writer Jessica Mitford, one of my favorite truth-tellers ( along with I.F. Stone), who briefly held a teaching position at San Jose State University in California, involved the signing of a loyalty oath.
(link to Mitford page)
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/ar ... ;read=6052
But Jessica Mitford wasn't, unlike me, trying to support a young family, buy a necessary car, and pay her rent and food.
Of course I didn't refuse to sign the loyalty oath and expect them to hire me anyway. They fired an eminence like Jessica Mitford, didn't they? Even when her classes were overflowing with eager students.
Sometimes you just have to compromise a little.
Zlatko
