all wrong. I fancy that the real reason why I lectured so much
was to indulge my showing-off propensities. To stand before a class or
an audience; to be the cynosure of all eyes; to have a crowd hanging on
your words . . . . all showing off! Very, very human, but . . . . bad
for the audience.

When a teacher lectures he is unconsciously giving expression to his
desire to gain a feeling of superiority. That, I fancy, is the deepest
wish of every one of us . . . . to impress others, to be superior. You
see it in the smallest child. Give him an audience, and he will show
off for hours. The boy at the top of the class gains his feeling of
superiority by beating the others at arithmetic, while the dunce at the
bottom of the class gains his in more original ways . . . punching the
top boy at playtime, scoring goals at football, spitting farther than
anyone else in school. I have seen a boy smash a window merely to draw
attention to himself, and thus to gain a momentary feeling of
superiority.

And we grown-ups are boys at heart. The boy is the father to the man.
Take, for instance, a childish trait--exhibitionism. Most children at
an early age love to run about naked, to show off their bodies. Later
the conventions of society make the child repress this wish to exhibit
himself. But we know that a repressed wish does not die; it merely
buries itself in the unconscious. Many years later the exhibition
impulse comes out in sublimated form as a desire to show off before the
public . . . hence our politicians, actors, actresses, street-corner
revivalists, and--er--dominies.

Now I hasten to add that there is nothing to be ashamed of in being a
politician or a dominie. But if I lecture a class I am making the
affair my show, and I am not the most important actor in the play; I am
the scene-shifter; the real actors who should be declaiming their lines
are sitting on hard benches staring at me and wondering what I am
raving about. Each little person is thirsting to show his or her
superiority, and he never gets the chance. Occasionally I may ask a
sleepy-looking urchin what are the exports to Canada, and he may gain a
slight feeling of superiority if he can tell the right answer. Yet I
fancy that his unconscious self despises me and my question. Why in
all the earth should I ask a question when I know the answer? The
whole thing is an absurdity. The only questions asked in a school
should be asked by the pupil