Research & Publications: Psychoanalysis Applied to Education

The Hidden Curriculum

The powerful emotional processes aroused by teaching and learning with preschool children.By Adrienne Bolinder, M. A.

Imagine a 1 ½ - 2 year old who just got their favorite toy stolen by a friend. The child now furious and upset goes after the friend trying to grab the toy back. He isn’t successful, so he starts hitting the friend on the head. There is a turmoil of grabbing and hitting and suddenly a scratch appears on the friend’s cheek. In a final desperate attempt to regain ownership, the child bites the friend thereby leaving a ring of tooth marks on his arm. The bite mark is deep and tiny bloodspots start seeping through the skin.

What was this battle about? Was it only about the ownership of a possession?

The Conversation Group

Introduction: Using group psychoanalytic techniques to resolve resistances to learning English with recently immigrated Chinese students in a high school setting

Seward Park High School occupies an entire block on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A grand old neighborhood institution with the capacity to hold four thousand students, it has served the waves of immigrants who live in the tenements and housing projects in the surrounding areas for the hundred and more years of its existence. At the time of this study I had been an English teacher there for ten years.