Losing a job or not being able to find one almost always brings unwelcome changes. If you've lost a job, the first feeling is often one of shock. On top of the loss of income, many people find the whole routine of their life is shattered, their contact with other people reduced, their ambitions halted and their identity as a worker removed.
There may be good feelings too—it's nice to be able to lie in bed in the morning, to spend more time with children, or to have more time to think—a better job may be just around the corner. But, unless a better job does turn up, chances are the days start getting longer and the time becomes harder to fill. Many people pass through periods of difficulty in sleeping and eating. They feel irritable and depressed, often isolated and lonely.
Despite all these problems, unemployment can be a chance for a fresh start. You can discover that it provides an opportunity to sort out or rethink what you want from life and how best you can get it. You can use the time to plan how to find a new job, learn a new skill, develop your hobbies, see if you can run your own business, do some voluntary work in your community or meet new people. It's up to you. When you first drift off into slumber, your eyes will roll about a bit, your temperature will drop slightly, your muscles will relax, and your breathing will become quite regular. Your brain waves slowdown a bit, with the alpha rhythm predominating for the first few minutes. This is the first stage of sleep. For the next 30 minutes or so, you will drift down through Stage 2 and Stage 3. The lower your stage of sleep, the slower your brain waves will be. About 40 — 60 minutes after you lose consciousness, you will reach the last stage. Your brain waves will show the delta rhythm.
You may think that you stay at this deep stage all the rest of the night, but that turns out not to be the case. About 80 minutes after you fall into slumber, your activity cycle will increase slightly. The delta rhythm will disappear, to be replaced by the activity pattern of brain waves. Your eyes will begin to dart around under your closed eyelids. This period of Rapid Eye Movements lasts for 8 — 15 minutes and is called REM sleep. During both light and deep sleep, the muscles in your body are relaxed but capable of movement. As you slip into REM sleep, a very odd thing occurs — most of the voluntary muscles in your body become paralyzed. Although your brain shows very rapid bursts of neural activity during REM sleep, your body is incapable of moving. REM sleep is accompanied byextensive muscular inhibition. Of all the areas of learning the most important is the development of attitudes. Emotional reactions as well as logical thought processes affect the behavior of most people.
"The burnt child fears the fire" is one instance ; another is the rise of despots like Hitler. Both examples also point up the fact that attitudes stem from experience. In one case the experience was direct and impressive; in the other it was indirect and cumulative. The Nazis were indoctrinated largely by the speeches they heard and the books they read.
The classroom teacher in the elementary school is in a strategic position to influence attitudes. This is true partly because children acquire attitudes from those adults whose word they respect.
Another reason it is true is that pupils often delve somewhat deeply into a subject in school that has only been touched upon at home or has possibly never occurred to them before. To a child who had previously acquired little knowledge of Mexico, his teacher's method of handling such a unit would greatly affect his attitude toward Mexicans.
The media through which the teacher can develop wholesome attitudes are innumerable. Social studies (with special reference to races, creeds and nationalities) , science matters of health and safety, the very atmosphere of the classroom... these are a few of the fertile fields for the inculcation of proper emotional reactions.
However. when children come to school with undesirable attitudes, it is unwise for the teacher to attempt to change their feelings by cajoling or scolding them. She can achieve the proper effect by helping them obtain constructive experiences.
To illustrate, first grade pupils afraid of policemen will probably alter their attitudes after a classroom chat with the neighborhood officer in which he explains how he protects them. In the same way, a class of older children can develop attitudes through discussion, research, outside reading and all-day trips.
Finally, a teacher must constantly evaluate her own attitudes, because her influence can be deleterious if she has personal prejudices. This is especially true in respect to controversial issues and questions on which children should be encouraged to reach their own decisions as a result of objective analysis of all the facts. Although "naming rights" have proliferated in American higher education for the past several decades, the phenomenon has recently expanded to extraordinary lengths. Anything to get an extra dollar out of donors is fair game. I know colleges and universities sorely need to raise funds in these times of fiscal constraints, but things have gotten a bit out of hand.
Universities and colleges have long been named after donors-think of Harvard, Yale, Brown, and many others. John Harvard would hardly get a bench named after him today, given the modesty of his gift of books for the library back in the seventeenth century. Now it takes much more to get one's name on a college. One institution, Rowan University of New Jersey, changed its name (from Glassboro State College) not long ago when a large donation was made. Buildings, too, have been affected. Traditionally, they were named after people such as distinguished scholars or visionary academic leaders; now they're often named after big donors.
Why is all of this happening now? The main motivation for the naming frenzy is, of course, to raise money. Donors love to see their names, or the names of their parents or other relatives, on buildings, schools, institutions, professorships, and the like. Increasingly, corporations and other businesses also seek to benefit from having their names on educational facilities. Today, no limits seem to exist on what can be named. If something does not have a name, it is up for grabs—a staircase, a pond, or a parking garage. Once all the major facilities have titles, lesser things go on the naming auction block. Colleges and universities, public and private, are all under increased pressure to raise money, and naming brings in cash.
It is unproductive. Separate branding weakens the focus and mission of an institution and perhaps even its broader reputation. It confuses the public, including potential students, and feeds the idea that the twenty-first-century university is simply a confederation of independent entrepreneurial domains.
The trends we see now in the United States, and perhaps tomorrow in other countries, will inevitably weaken the concept of the university as an institution that is devoted to the search for truth and the transmission of knowledge. All this naming distracts from the mission of an institution that has almost a millennium of history and cheapens its image. It is a sad symbol indeed of the commercialization and entrepreneurialism of the contemporary university.
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