To the editors:
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I heard Bettelheim speak at a high school in the evening, in the northwest suburbs, in the 70’s. The auditorium was full of teachers who were clearly desperate because they did not know what to do with their students who, as anyone who was there can remember, were hostile, angry, uncontrollable, suspicious (as well they might have been, listening over and over to how pot would kill you) and experimenting with dangerous drugs, specifically LSD. They had come because they wanted to get some suggestions, some help. They were humble, they knew they were in trouble, and they were asking.
The misplaced esteem in which most of the audience held him, his obviously contemptuous attitude, his sneering tone of voice, left most of the most deeply concerned teachers feeling like absolute failures, without hope. Why were they having problems if God was not?
