Left Brain, Right Brain: Battle of the Hemispheres

Having, apparently, no dominant hemisphere, my left brain seems to be in continual defiance of my right brain and vice versa. I write with my right hand, handle many tools with my left; I press the strings of the dulcimer with my left hand, but strum with the right hand pulling the pick toward me, instead of away as most people play. I conjure the most impossible schemes, then take out pencil and paper to map, list or chart ways to achieve them.

Generally, however, I am able to focus the side of the brain needed to accomplish whatever task is at hand. Today, it would seem, as I rode ‘round and ‘round on the tractor, cutting grass I had neglected for several weeks, I was thinking too far to the right. I was considering how some people simply do not fit in the environment in which they are born.

In particular, I was reflecting on two students I work with, both quite gifted. Student A is mechanically gifted and cares little for academia - give him an engine to redesign or the task of creating an implement to achieve a certain mechanical task, and leave him alone to do it, and he will outperform most others. But he does not do well in school and is quite miserable and creates misery for his teachers who consider him to be obstinate and non-compliant.

Student B is academically gifted and has taught himself many things beyond the level of his peers. He would learn best if he were allowed to teach the class - sort of on-the-job training. But this is not acceptable to our way of doing things and, therefore, while he is generally quite happy, he creates a bit of misery for his teachers who consider him to be arrogant and non-compliant.

I can’t come up with a valid argument for compliance for either of these young men. Sometimes the adjustment to one’s environment exacts too great a penalty on the conforming personality. Something very rare and precious is lost. I think that will be the case for each of these students, and I am not proud of my complicity in achieving this end.

So I was, contemplating the process of individuation, and how this might best be accomplished within a system which follows too closely a more scientific framework - a substantive misinterpretation of John Dewey - and singing “A Bridge over Troubled Waters.” It was about at that point in my own reverie, as I reached the last beat of “I will lay me down,” that I barreled forward in my pursuit of reaching the hard to reach corners of the yard and hit a brick wall, literally, managing somehow to break the tractor’s steering mechanism.

Now I am faced with not one conundrum, but with two. And the right brain has no bright ideas for the left brain to map out on paper.

I clearly need both Student A and Student B.