Dreaming in the Classroom: Practices, Methods, and Resources in Dream Education

Introduction

Introduction This book is probably not the first book you have read about dreams. There are many fine treatments of the subject, which we identify and discuss throughout, and list in a bibliography. This is primarily for dream educators and others who want to extend and deepen their knowledge by involving themselves in dream education as teachers and/or as advanced learners. The relative newcomer to dreams also will find this book, supplemented by other resources, to be a useful guide. We acknowledge that it might sound strange to speak of “educating” people about dreams. Isn’t dreaming something you just do, without needing anyone to teach you how? Yes, and no! Yes, dreaming is a natural process of the imagination that does not require any conscious effort or training; it simply happens, automatically, all through our lives. Indeed, the capacity to dream seems to be inherent in the evolved neural architecture of the human brain. We are truly a dreaming species, born to a lifelong cycling of waking and sleeping modes of consciousness. At the same time, we do learn how to view and use our dreams. Every culture through history has developed its own traditions of dream belief and practice and has passed them on (i.e., taught them) to the next generation . People learn about dreams from their families, their religious or spiritual leaders, their healers, and their teachers. Cumulatively, these influences have a tangible impact on the frequency and content of people’s remembered dreams. Dream education is, by any reasonable standard of cross-cultural comparison, a universal practice in human societies. So, no, it shouldn’t seem strange to engage the different ways people teach each other about dreaming. What is strange is how rarely these practices have been discussed in the contemporary Western academic context. The purpose of this book is to examine current activities and issues in dream education, giving our sense of emerging possibilities that will shape teaching practices in the coming decades. The book is a resource guide for practitioners at all educational levels, in a wide variety of disciplines. In addition to our many years of experience teaching our own courses on dreams, we have spent the past several years gathering information—convening panels and symposia on the subject of dream education, listening to teachers from many different disciplines describe their approaches and experiences, and surveying 1 2 Dreaming in the Classroom the curricula of colleges, universities, and graduate institutes. Thanks to the far-ranging scholarly network spawned by the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), we have gained a broad overview of what is actually happening in contemporary Western dream education. At the most basic level, this book holds up a mirror to present-day society, reflecting back a lively but little-known collectivity of educational practices revolving around the universal human experience of dreaming. We do not believe any one culture or tradition has a monopoly on how best to do dream education. Our major emphasis is on teaching practices in Western higher education because that is where we work and what we know best. However, we are well aware of and deeply respectful toward venerable non-Western dream perspectives, and dream education outside conventional university environments. In this era of the Internet and instantaneous worldwide communication, information of all kinds is increasingly flowing over national, cultural, and institutional divides. We see this happening in dream education, and we view this book as one contribution to that broader process of emerging cross-cultural dialogue. We recognize that for some persons dreams are associated with superstitious beliefs and fringe activities like astrology, channeling, and alien abductions. We have noticed, too, that the reactions of many persons typically combine doubtfulness about the value of dreams in general and their fittingness as objects of study with a fascination about their own dreams. Experience has taught us that people possess an innate curiosity about dreaming, but they are wary of exaggerated claims and dubious theories. In this respect, we address our book and its arguments not just to people already interested in dream education, but also to the wider public. We devote considerable attention to questions of intellectual integrity in the study of dreams, with the goal of establishing a sound, reasonable basis for making valid claims about the origins and functions of dreaming and the meanings of dreams. Dreams always will be viewed by some people with skepticism, even disdain, but that should not stop dream scholars from continuing...