When we spoke of children in our classes, we asked what freedom we wanted for them. All of us felt intuitively that what we do for and with our children serves some higher purpose, some purpose in which the best of life becomes open for those children. This purpose did not inherently involve the child's freedom. Many of us also felt that we missed getting to that purpose ourselves as we grew from children into adults. We wondered what that purpose was and why our own higher purpose still remained unfulfilled. This undiscovered purpose still existed and was somehow still open to us even as it remained obscure. In our discussions about our childhood experiences, we discovered we had learned meaning perspectives, habits of mind and action, which motivated the way we responded to and acted toward children. It also became clear that the way we dealt with children in our care served as an extension and reflection of how we treated and cared for ourselves. The inadequacy of our becoming a self lingered still and left us all with doubts about our own value as a self. We found that, in some very real and hidden way, we still longed for the comforts not afforded us as children. Out of this insecurity of self came our fear of interviews—the fear that motivated our entire discussion.
"If the subject of the interview is us, and we are afraid of the interview, what do we have to fear about our self? What's wrong with us?" Better still we can ask, "What do we think or perceive as wrong with us?"
When I felt the interview class needed another way to get to the essence of the fear that disabled my students, Patricia Cranton, an educator in transformative learning, a person of remarkable care and scope, suggested I ask them to draw. The students took the suggestion to draw what an interview felt like very much to heart. No one ever wanted to show what she/he drew, but they discussed it freely. Many noteworthy elements came from these drawings, and they almost all showed the absolute powerlessness and fear that they felt when entering an interview. We all agreed that such panic did not generally allow for their best presentation of themselves.
When we discussed the elements present in these drawings, one quality stood out time and time again with almost universal if unspoken agreement. When they drew themselves, they drew a very small, nearly insignificant person sitting on a very small chair (occasionally kneeling). The interviewer almost always towered over that little person, almost always appeared angry and incredibly dismissive. They told me what they saw in their pictures, and I drew a representation of what they told me on the white board. They generally seemed quite happy at watching their ideas appear as a drawing to everyone's amusement and edification. The first time I drew what they ordered, I stepped back and looked at what I had drawn. I asked the class if they could see what I saw in terms of the relationship portrayed quite unconsciously. There was a very large person with all the power looming over a very small person who felt powerless and wanted deeply for the giant above them to give them what they wanted. They wanted acceptance.
It showed a child and an adult in relationship—not a happy relationship and not a happy thought. When we entered an interview, we returned to the fears and insecurities of our childhood. We returned to our childhood feelings. We also realized that we must carry these feelings with us all the time, and they just turned up writ large in moments of personal stress where how others responded to us mattered intensely. That made for some very intense, very fearful, and negative feelings at an interview, feelings which did us no good at all.