“When our teachers are underpaid and, even more, underappreciated, this is a huge deterrent...we have discouraged young women from the field of education”
Last week’s Inbox included two letters about children who cut off ties with their parents. I feel that the first letter is unwittingly the answer to the second letter.
My heart belongs with Anonymous #1. The writer of the first letter goes to great lengths to describe her repeated and futile efforts at pleasing an irascible and severely negative mother, and how the trauma lasted — and blighted — her entire adult life.
Anonymous #2 can’t be bothered with facts in real time; she only — and vehemently — shares her theory that just by virtue of someone holding a position of prestige, his or her opinion must be believed at face value and unconditionally. Sorry, no way.
I have great respect for professionals and therapists and consult with them regularly. But I follow this caveat: If their advice sounds suspect and in every way “not right,” then yes, we should absolutely question it, reject it, refute it.
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