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The
Archetypal Hero's Journey
in Teaching and Learning:
A Study in Jungian Pedagogy
by Clifford Mayes
Educator and therapist Clifford Mayes offers an original and powerful
vision of teaching and learning as a heroic journey, central to the
growth of the student as an integrated being. This journey is filled
with such universal human archetypes as the Wise Elder, the Trickster,
the Great Mother, and the Great Father.
Informed by the
psychoanalytical studies of Freud, Jung, and neo-Freudian theorists,
Mayes emphasizes the need for a healthy balance in the classroom between
the technical and the poetical, the analytical and the intuitive.
Teaching and learning are part of the great journey of individuation,
and every student must be given the chance to heed the call and fulfill
the archetypal role of the Hero in the true adventure of transformative
education.
Eschewing the
corporate mentality guiding todays curriculum, Mayes advocates a
pedagogy predicated upon the myth of the Heros (Heroines) quest,
which guides both teachers and students through a series of trials,
labors, transformations, and ultimate awakenings. . . . The quest is
ultimately about asking and answering the great questions together
questions that transcend the merely secular and speak to the
overarching issue of "What am I called do with my life?" Such
questions, he persuasively argues, should be at the core of education.
-- from the Foreword by Mark R. Grandstaff
University of Maryland, College Park
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