Current essay deals with the analysis of the structure of human relationships, which are those relations between different people, which occur during their multidimensional patterns of interactions. There is no denying the importance of the fact that we can speak about different types or forms of human relations.
As the entry of David’s Hawes text Dog-Tied suggests “we are surrounded by interesting, complex and puzzling relationships, which are rarely examined closely” (Hawes, 65).
As Hawes suggests, even a pet and its master have certain difficult patterns of relations, which depend on many conditions – the dog’s character, master’s behavior vis-à-vis his/her pet etc. It goes without saying that the relations between people are much more complex since they are embedded in different social interactions.
Leslie Marmon Silko (Chapter 2, p. 52) places particular emphasis on the importance of relations between different objects and subjects and especially people. This author notes that the most crucial discoveries in the world had always to do with some kind of relationship.
Human relations may be of quite different types. The most understandable and common for every human being are relations between the members of the family, the relations between friends and surrounding people. These relations may be described as personal, however they are also embedded in the social context.
The relations in family are the most widespread type of human personal relationship. These are relations between husband and wife, grandparents and children, between older and new generation, between children and their parents. As the considerations of Cindy Bosley in her interesting text What the Honey Meant suggest (Bosley, p.61)
Personal human relations may be characterized by different feelings, emotions and including friendship, love, hatred, anger, envy etc.
This greatly depends on the character of these relations and their ability to influence the level of emotional consciousness. There are different families, different cultural traditions and mindsets, which significantly affect the nature of personal human relations. But it should be noted that without negative barriers, difficulties and external circumstances they generally tend to bear positive nature and are often characterized by mutual respect, emotional empathy and sympathy.
In what follows we will focus on the relations between a teacher and pupils, which will be analyzed in compositional form following the patterns of the essays in the text-book.
A teacher and her pupils
She was working as a teacher of history only for several month – she was young and lacking necessary experience of communication with pupils. However, she was sure that she has all necessary abilities and knowledge and really like her job and what is more important she felt that it was her vocation. Many people who knew her said that she really loves children and is pleased of communicating with interesting people. They also said that she was confident, kind and caring person, which are the necessary features of character for her job.
Of course, all of them constitute a good teacher, however, who knows what it would be in real situation. All these reflections made Ann nervous, while she was walking up the stairs in the school were she worked. She thought: “What difficult thing are human relations, since they are so strange and unpredictable and you can never know how the events would change”. When she walked down the stairs with such thoughts she met several pupils and teachers, who presented her warm welcomes and smiles and that made Ann think that not so bad at all. When she entered the classroom, the time for the break was already over, but still no pupils in the class-room. This made her for the first time angry.
Those teenagers whom she was going to read the lecture did not know her, because it was for the first time she came here and she decided to give disciplinary instructions to avoid future misunderstandings with her pupils. Ann’s specialty in the University was psychology and she knew for sure that it is extremely important for a teacher to take grip of situation from the first lesson. It is important to show children or adolescents that disciplinary violations would be punished and no freedom for loutishness and disobedience would be granted.
When all pupils finally gathered in class, Ann introduced herself, announced her approach to discipline and education, made other comments and began the lesson. She was satisfied that her approach to situation proved to be effective as pupils behaved properly and effectively did all the exercise and attentively listened to the teacher. Ann felt free space for giving pupils that knowledge, skills and information, which she possessed and it was really a great pleasure. From then on positive relations between Ann her pupils were settled.
Ann was no longer nervous and transmitted all of her love and patience to these pupils and they did the same. Ann knew what is the balance between open communication and properly organized learning process and always kept the grip on situation. Ann used both collective and individual approach to education which proved to be quite effective for her pupils. Her class was one of the most successful in educational terms in school. However, unlike other teachers who forced children to do something Ann used another, more pupil-centered technology, built on constructing normal human relations.
Other teachers in school, who often had conservative approach to relations between teacher and pupils, used repressive measures against their pupils. For instance, those of them who did not hand their works in time or were not eager for some reasons do their homework were often criticized, badly assessed and verbally punished. The implications thereof, of course, were opposite to the aspirations of those teachers. These verbal and educational punishments resulted in further deterioration of the educational quality and lowering pupils’ interest in the learning process.
Unlike these conservative teachers, Ann had another approach to educational process. Even when some of her pupils were not ready with the exercises she avoided direct punishments, sanctions and penalties. More attention was rather paid to motivation and building normal professional human relations between the teacher and the pupils.
Those pupils, who made all class and homework with zeal and patience, were not penalized when they forgot to do something, however those who regularly violated educational and disciplinary norms were punished severely. By these means, Ann managed to build normal human relations in the class and pupils really liked her and atmosphere which she managed to create.
Positive relations of children and teacher may be proved by informal survey which was designed to define the most popular teacher in the school. The results of the survey showed that Ann ranked the first place in popularity among all teachers in this school. To sum it up, Ann’s experience shows that human relations are very delicate thing and should be properly built to avoid negative consequences. Normal human relations are premised on mutual understanding and the ability to build excellent communicational patterns.