The Feeling of Being Humiliated in the Classroom

Editorial by
Dr. Dakshinamoorthi Raja Ganesan
Professor and Head of the Department of Education, University of Madras,
Madras 600 005, India
(Professor Emeritus in 2003)

Published in the Journal Experiments in Education in 2001,
placed on www.humiliationstudies.org with his permission, February 2004

Being humiliated is an unwelcome experience. However, it is universal too – in that everyone suffers this experience at some point or other in his/her lifetime. Though the humiliating episode may be short and not physically nor economically damaging it is psychologically painful and lingers long – in consciousness soon after the experience, and in the unconscious for a very long time, often through decades into old age. Dr. Evelin Gerda Linder, a physician and cross-cultural psychologist in the institute of Psychology, University of Oslo, has done extensive and intensive research on this theme but in the military context. She has adopted a truly multidisciplinary approach.

Being humiliated is a very common experience in schools and colleges. The perpetrator may be the teacher or the seniors. “Ragging” as it is occurring in our colleges is a humiliating experience. It is sometimes so traumatic that the victim commits suicide. And, there are teachers who humiliate their students sometimes unwittingly and sometimes wantonly. Some of them – especially, those subscribing to the old schools of thought – may justify it to others and to themselves on the ground that it is a form of motivation adopted to provoke the victim to improve himself or herself. We do not know whether being humiliated has ever been found to be effective in this direction. We believe that even if it is effective scholastically it inflicts incalculable damage on the self-concept of the learner.

There must be varied forms of humiliation in the classroom. A survey of the different forms of humiliation can be undertaken to identify the forms and classify them. The forms can be classified in terms of the source – whether it is conscious and intentional or unconscious and unintentional; the nature of the target, manifestation /effect on the victim, and consequences. The impact will be severe when it is conscious and intentional. When the target is a group its impact will be less severe than when it is an individual.

We also believe that all those teachers who humiliate their students – whatever their professed intention may be – are sadistic. If the target is a group most probably it is rooted in the source’s prejudices against and stereotypes target. If the context is scholastic it will have a kind of reverse Pygmalion Effect. Yes, when the victim is a pre-school or elementary school child the damage will be disproportionately severe and lasting. Whereas older children may be able to recognise the sadistic nature and prejudices of the teacher and to that extent minimise the damage young and innocent children are utterly defenseless. In fact they may not even be able to comprehend and articulate and report the experience of being humiliated to their parents.

There may be varied patterns of humiliation vis-a-vis the source: a teacher may be given to humiliating all his/her students, always. Or, he/she may do so occasionally. He/she may persistently humiliate a particular individual student or a particular group. He/she may compare and contrast an individual with another individual, an individual with a group, or a group with another group. For example, we have referred in these columns a few years ago to the negative effect of such comparisons when siblings study in the same class successively and the younger one is compared unfavourably with his/her sibling especially of the same sex. The humiliation may be direct and verbal or indirect, sarcastic and non-verbal. Jean Paul Sartre, for example, has dealt with the humiliating experience of the Other’s Look in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness.
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The nature and effect of humiliation may also vary depending upon the source, the target the nature of the recipient and the context. We surmise that the elements and/or their proportions in the content of the experience of humiliation will be different according to the source, context and the nature of the target. The experience of humiliation may involve helplessness, hostility to the source, guilt, or self-pity. We surmise that being humiliated by a male teacher will be more traumatic for the girls than the other way about. We also surmise that being humiliated in a mixed sex class will be more traumatic for both the sexes than in a single sex class. Similarly, we surmise that the trauma will be more severe and longer lasting on girls than on boys.

We surmise that the phenomenology – the elements and/or their proportions in the contents of the experience – of humiliation will be somewhat different for the different groups: Helplessness, guilt, self-pity, covert or overt hostility towards the source are likely to be ingredients of the experience of humiliation. Again, the cultural differences may make for differences in the perception, experience and direction for provenance of humiliation.

Inasmuch the traces of the trauma of the experience can never be fully wiped off even if the source makes abundant and public amends, it is better to prevent humiliation than try to cure it –if at all this is possible. The best way to prevent it is to choose teachers who have imbibed the value of the intrinsic dignity of a human being. A variety of behavioural tools like Abidon’s, Bale’s, and Flander’s Interaction Analysis Categories have been developed in the fifties and the sixties of the last century. However, the phenomenology of students’ classroom experience which mediates between teacher behaviour and the students’ learning. We believe the classroom experience should be an empowering and not a humiliating one. We also believe that teachers must be specifically sensitised to the traumatic nature of even small, casual humiliating experiences. We believe it is absolutely essential to adopt qualitative methods of research to gain an insight into the contrast between humiliating and empowering teacher-student interactions.

We commend the topic for research in the Indian educational context.
-Dr. D. Raja Ganesan
(Those who are interested in pursuing the topic “Feeling Humiliated” may contact Dr. Evelin Gerda Lindner, Physician and Cross-cultural Social Psychologist, Institute of Psychology, University of Oslo)

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Please read the messages that Dr. Ganesan wrote to Lindner over the years (placed on www.humiliationstudies with his permission):

Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001
Dear Dr. Lindner
Greetings from India. I read with deep interest your mail on humiliation. Humiliation is a subtle,deep and often enduring psychic violence. Even small and short episodes linger long in the mind. You have done well to highlight an unwelcome experience which is near universal --everyone is humiliated some time or other during his/her lifecourse. As far as I know this is an unexplored area. Humiliation in the classroom is totally an undeserving experience for a child who comes to the school to learn and grow into a dignified human being. I am referring to your contribution in the editorial of the forthcoming issue of "Experiments in Education" a professional journal I am editing. Of course, I will send you a copy of it as and when it is published. And I will suggest the topic for work in the Indian context for any interested doctoral student of mine.
I take the liberty of suggesting development of eufunctional psychological training strategies for bracing up to and coping with humiliation.Also, modes of getting rid of its lingering effects.
Wishing you all success
Very sincerely yours
D.Raja Ganesan
(Professor and Head, Dept.of Education,University of Madras, Madras 600 005, India

Date: 11 Feb 2004:
Dear Dr.Lindner
I would like to offer a suggestion: The range of normative responses to varieties of humiliation in different contexts across cultures deserve to be identified, codified, consolidated and offered within the spectrum of choice in coping with attempts at humiliation -- deliberate and intentional or accidental and collateral.
I believe Indian and Chinese cultures have a different range of normative responses. Of course, they may be more autoplastic. It is not known whether autoplastic responses are more eufunctional in the long run than alloplastic responses. Of course, I for one would commend alloplastic response even if it is dysfunctional in the long run.
...
Wish you all success in eliminating humiliation from human interaction. An interesting if not inappropriate and amusing question: Don't we humiliate animals -- especially domestic pets-- often unwittingly?!
Yours sincerely
D. Raja Ganesan

Date: 11 Feb 2004 Dr. Ganesan wrote to one of his students:
Dear Sita
Look at the website esp. the conference in 2005. Think of a piece of action research in conflict resolution with attention to 'humiliation' as a variable. Of course, I am willing to guide and collaborate with you.If our paper based on research along these lines is good we can think of participating in the forthcoming international conference. I also suggest you have a look at the editorial I wrote on Dr.Lindner's work in our journal sometime ago. It is, as far as I reckon, a pioneering work in a hitherto neglected area of human experience. Another suggestion is that you do some work on the phenomenology of humiliation. You can borrow a book I have on empirical phenomenology and also read my copy of Ms. Ramani's M.Phil thesis on phenomenology of test anxiety which I guided.
Good luck
Yours sincerely
D. Raja Ganesan

Date: 11 Feb 2004:
Dear Dr. Lindner
...
My general impression -- derived from a reading of Post-Emotional Society -- is that people are getting inured -- thick-skinned! -- to humiliation. The book deals with a whole range of professions like Public Relations and Air Hostesses part of whose professional responsibilities is to bear with humiliation. And, those who are not thick skinned are falling by the way side in the rat race. And, people are ready to put up with humiliation from those above them but flare up when it is from those below them. Well, I must stop. I will keep writing to you off and on because the topic is of interest to me.
Let me add: Both the major epics of India, the Ramayana and Mahabaratha, are steered into their major crises and catastrophes because of minor, inconsequential humiliations suffered by two characters: one is a minor, and otherwise inconsequential character -- the equivalent of a servant maid, and the other, of course, the arch villain who happens to slip at which the heroine unwitingly and irrepressibly laughs. Yes, humiliations need not be of major economic consequence.
D.Raja Ganesan

Date: 12 Feb 2004:
Dear Dr. Lindner
Greetings from India. Yes, you have a blanket permission to put up whatever you deem worthy of your website space among my reflections-of course, with a credit line.
Subsequent to my sending the e-mail it occurred to me to bring out a book of readings consisting of original texts focussing on the experience of humiliation from world class epics and mythologies and annotations thereon in print form. It can help those who are humiliated in real life to cope with -- perhaps by understanding the mute depths of their experience and finding echoes of the same in the expressions and also by way of consolation that even epic characters have suffered humiliation.
For example, the Mahabaratha has episodes of humiliation of the heroes. The heroes lose in gambling their everything including their common wife to their villanous cousins (there is a streak of polyandry here). The wife is brought by orders of the villanous cousins of the heroes to the royal court and disrobed in the public. Many poets in the various vernacular languages of India have treated this powerful and painful episode. All of them condemn the eminent figures of learned men who kept mute at this atrocity.
That brings me to another dimension of humiliation: humiliation in tete-a-tete and humiliation in the public. Again, among the Nobel Laureates in literature who has treated humiliation in an exemplary way? Perhaps the list includes Tony Morrison? A well known Tamil writer (who is no more) lost his grown up son. The writer himself had been in his seventies. What he did was to write a book on filial bereavement in epics and found catharsis and consolation thereby.
Yes, it is the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said people will forget major injustices but minor slights often remain simmering and festering.This is an afterthought -recollection -- upon the causes of major catastophe in the two Indian epics I cited yesterday.
And that leads me to (nocturnal) dreams that follow episodes of humiliation during the day. Another dimension would be personality correlates of degree of susceptibility to humiliation. Yes, as an afterthought it also occurred to me that people are becoming -- thanks to the propulsions and compulsions of economic liberalisation and globalisation?-- not only thick skinned but also hard hearted. Well, that is at least my perception. I guess politicians are less susceptible to humiliation than people in other walks of life are! I will stop for the present. Wishing you all success
Yours sincerely
D.Raja Ganesan