RASPBERRIES AND CHILDREN

A Celebration of Teaching

Chapter 5

The Principle of OZ

A scarecrow who has the sense to ask for a brain, probably already has a pretty good one. A tin woodman who feels that he has no heart, wouldn't if he were heartless. A lion who has the courage to say that he is a coward, isn't really.

But the scarecrow knows his head is stuffed with straw, the tin woodman hears a hollow sound when he pounds his chest and the lion knows he's a wimp.

That's where wizards come in.

And what is a wizard?

In L. Frank Baum's story he is a small balding ventriloquist from Omaha, Nebraska. A humbug. But a kindly humbug. A well-meaning humbug who becomes a wizard by giving up the pretense of being one.

The Principle of OZ is simple: What we can imagine we may very well possess. A wizard simply holds a mirror before us and asks us to look as if for the first time at the person we have unwittingly become.

True wizards have power for; false wizards have power over. Power for requires the giving up of power over.

When we think of wizards ordinarily we think of pointed hats, cloaks emblazoned with signs of the zodiac and incantations. We think, for example, of Merlin. But modern wizards look quite different – as different from medieval ones as James Watson is from Dr. Frankenstein, Einstein from Copernicus or Freud from Rasputin.

A good wizard has the skill to give us possession of that which we already are but have not dared to own, as the Wonderful Wizard of OZ did, as a good enough parent can. The power to become and understand that which we are not, as Merlin made the young Arthur an ant, a hawk and a carp; as a director helps a young actor become Joan of arc or Peter Pan. As a good teacher every day helps a student find the promise within a young mind.

People who talk a great deal have on their listeners the opposite effect of wizards. The more they say the less credible they become, unless what they say is in testimony to a given text. Preachers, for example and lawyers manage to remain credible contrary to all common sense expectations by identifying themselves with sacred or profane documents. Borrowing power from the document they first confound and then redeem you. It's the oldest scam in the world. On the pretext of turning you outside in they turn you inside out. And your pockets as well. And once outside what do you find? Them.

They can talk entire nonsense and yet sustain the attention of a listener. Partly it is because their knowledge is arcane and the power they have over it excites our admiration and envy. Partly it is because their documents are of an official sort that we cannot easily dismiss except at our peril.

These people are not wizards but Humbugs. Whether fundamentalist, charismatic, legalistic, or political, they intend the opposite of enlightenment. They bind frightened minds with obscurantism. They confuse us to retain their power, whereas wizards simplify to give us power of our own.

A modern wizard may work in a Tibetan monastery, an office with a white sound machine, a counseling center or a school. That doesn't mean that wizards are more commonplace than they were nine hundred years ago. Relative to the total population their number remains more or less constant. That's one of the problems; for we are more in need of wizards than people were a hundred or nine hundred years ago. Children are more in need of them.

And so it has been necessary to examine more closely the alchemical arts and to discover the principles upon which these arts are founded.

Fortunately The Wonderful Wizard of OZ himself provides a good starting place for that project, not only because he dresses and acts in a more familiar way than most of his antecedent wizards but because it is so easy for us to like him, to understand him, even to identify with him. And because in his metamorphosis from a false to a true wizard there is much for us to learn, and practice.

The Wizard of OZ was a carnival man. His specialties were ventriloquism – an ancient con probably invented by the Priests of Isis – and hot air ballooning. One day he didn't come down. At least not anywhere near Omaha. It was, as he explains to Dorothy,

"In the midst of a strange people, who, seeing me come down from the clouds, thought I was a great wizard. Of course I let them think so, because they were afraid of me, and promised to do anything I wished them to.

"Just to amuse myself and to keep the good people busy, I ordered them to build this city, and my palace; and they did it all willingly and well. Then I thought, as the country was so green and beautiful, I would call it the Emerald City, and to make the name fit better I put green spectacles on all the people, so that everything they saw was green."

"But isn't everything here green?" asked Dorothy.

"No more than in any other city," replied OZ; "but when you wear green spectacles, why of course everything you see looks green to you."

The wizard, like many leaders put into office on popular mandate, is happy to have all his subjects view the world in the same way he does, through emerald-colored glasses. It provides a consensus that makes government easier. Or teaching.

OZ receives Dorothy and her suppliant friends in the palace at the Emerald City. He appears to them first as a ball of fire, then as a giant head and third as a beautiful lady. He is OZ the powerful, OZ the great and terrible! The Scarecrow is dumbfounded, the Tin Woodman is heartsick, the Cowardly Lion trembles and Dorothy despairs that she will never see Kansas again. The Wizard sends them off to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, never expecting to see them again. But this time-honored strategy for dealing with adolescents proves, as it so often does, ineffective. At great and unnecessary peril to themselves, the four adventurers succeed in their mission and return to demand their reward.

It is on the second visit that Toto, Dorothy's little terrier, knocks over the screen and exposes the bald-headed little man working the levers. When there is nothing left but to turn off the light show and confess, he does.

"I thought Oz was a great head," said Dorothy

"And I thought Oz was a lovely lady," said the Scarecrow.

"And I thought Oz was a ball of fire." exclaimed the Lion.

"No; you are all wrong," said the little man meekly. "I have been making believe."

"Making believe!" cried Dorothy. "Are you not a great Wizard?"

"Hush, my dear," he said. "Don't speak so loud, or you will be overheard -- and I should be ruined. I'm supposed to be a Great Wizard."

"And aren't you?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it, my dear; I'm just a common man."

"You're more than that," said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone; "you're a humbug."

"Exactly so!" declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if it pleased him. "I am a humbug."....

"I think you are a very bad man," said Dorothy.

"Oh no, my dear; I'm really a very good man; but I'm a very bad Wizard, I must admit."

Of course this is the moment in which OZ becomes a real wizard; for what it takes to make a good wizard is a good man!

Or a good leader, a good counselor, a good teacher, a good parent.

There is a critical time in metamorphosis, as any true wizard, adolescent or butterfly can tell you, when others know of us more than we know of ourselves. It is the grace of their faith that brings us to faith in ourselves and makes it possible for a good man to become a good wizard. His visitors expect just as much of him now as they expected earlier.

Knowing that he has no magic and realizing that it is still expected of him, he must look elsewhere. What he discovers is that the magic his visitors require lies within each of them. Even if he were a wizard of the sort he earlier pretended to be and they wanted him to be, he would be powerless to give the capacity for love, thought or courage. It is in admitting that he is a humbug that he finds he is not. It is in paying attention to his supplicants that he first begins to hear them. It is not magic after all that they require, but empathy and reassurance.

It is a very touching moment in the story when the great and powerful Oz, like a genial host in a Kansas farmhouse looks around at the trappings of his grandeur, realizes his visitors are still standing and says,

"Sit down. There are plenty of chairs; and I will tell you my story."

"Can't you give me brains?" asked the Scarecrow.

"You don't need them," the Wizard replied. "You are learning something every day. A baby has brains, but it doesn't know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on Earth the more experience you are sure to get."

"That may all be true," said the Scarecrow, "but I shall be very unhappy unless you give me brains."

The false wizard looked at him carefully.

"Well," he said with a sigh, "I'm not much of a magician, as I said; but if you will come to me tomorrow morning, I will stuff your head with brains. I cannot tell you how to use them, however; you must find that out for yourself."

"Oh thank you -- thank you!" cried the Scarecrow. "I'll find a way to use them, never fear!"

"But how about my courage?" asked the Lion anxiously?

"You have plenty of courage I am sure," answered OZ. "All you need is confidence in yourself There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty."

"Perhaps I have, but I'm scared just the same," said the Lion" "I shall really be very unhappy unless you give me the sort of courage that makes one forget he is afraid."

"Very well, I will give you that sort of courage tomorrow," replied OZ.

"How about my heart?" asked the Tin Woodman.

"Why as for that, answered OZ, "I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart."

"That must be a matter of opinion," said the Tin Woodman. "For my part, I will bear all the unhappiness without a murmur, if you will give me the heart."

"Very well," OZ answered meekly. "Come to me tomorrow and you shall have a heart. I have played wizard for so many years that I may as well continue the part a little longer.

"And now," said Dorothy, "how am I to get back to Kansas?"

"We shall have to think about that," replied the little man.

The wizard understands quite well what his visitors do not: that the Tin Woodman is filled with love, the Scarecrow with intelligence and, when his friends are threatened, the Lion with courage. He is like the teacher or the parent who knows that what a child needs when everything seems to be working fine but the engine won't start, is confidence.

"I'm not a writer," Margaret says, "I can't string three words together.

"A painter?" Henry says, "Are you kidding? I couldn't tell the difference between alizarin crimson and catsup if I tasted them."

And Mary believes that she couldn't possibly master the abstractions of mathematics.

"Have you ever tried?" we ask. "How do you know you can't?"

"Because my mother/father/sister/brother/teacher/friend said I couldn't. My sister, she's the painter. I don't have long enough fingers. I'm colorblind. No one in our family can. I've always been this way. That's girl stuff. I've got a head full of straw."

"What makes you a coward?" asked Dorothy...

"It's a mystery," replied the Lion. "I suppose I was born that way."

Perhaps we were. That's always a possibility. But there's also a good possibility that what we most want lies somewhere within us. The things we seriously want – the competencies, qualities of character, creative gifts – like the things the scarecrow, lion and woodman want, are things that we can imagine because they are incipient in us.

But getting them out is where we require the help of a wizard. Someone we believe in and who listens to what we say. Someone who believes in us and to whom we listen.

We comprehend the world much as a bat his environment, by making sounds that echo back to us. Among the wizard's powers is that he knows this and where to stand, quietly, so that we may hear ourselves. He is a surface that helps us find the shape of the room in which we live. The sounds that we emit are the sounds of our yearnings: for competency, beauty, understanding, power, and love.

There are ceremonies attendant to the achieving of wishes. Remember Dumbo. Whether he could have flown before he was given the magic wand is moot. He didn't believe he could; that's all that matters. And Wendy and the boys. Did it really take Tinker Bell's pixie dust?

And so the wizard gives each supplicant some palpable sign of his virtue so that he may own it.

"I have come for my courage," announced the lion, entering the room.

"Very well, answered the little man; "I will get it for you."

He went to a cupboard and reaching up to a high shelf took down a square green bottle, the contents of which he poured into a green-gold dish, beautifully carved. Placing this before the Cowardly Lion, who sniffed at it as if he did not like it, the Wizard said:

"Drink."

"What is it," asked the Lion.

"Well," answered Oz, "if it were inside you it would be courage. You know, of course, that courage is always inside one; so that this really cannot be called courage until you have swallowed it. Therefore I advise you to drink it as soon as possible."

The Lion hesitated no longer, but drank till the dish was empty.

"How do you feel now?" asked Oz.

"Full of courage," replied the Lion.

We have to lose our power in order to gain it. The powers of miracle, mystery and authority that we have mistakenly valued are as flimsy and vulnerable as the screen behind which Oz hides. The real power of a wizard, be he holy man, teacher, counselor or parent, is that he can walk in another's shoes and, learning that person's step, aspire then to learn his direction. Learning both, he may then allow himself to be led to the place where such magic as he may have will work. It is in following, very often, that we are of the greatest use to those whom we claim to nurture. In listening, which is a kind of following.

The true wizard has only so much power as is given him by those who trust in and believe him. So too a parent, a teacher or a helper.

When we sit with the young, at their level instead of above and beyond them we feel a great relief, not unlike that which Oz feels when he admits to being a humbug "as if it relieved him." He finds that there was no cause for blowing himself up like a blowfish except, like the blowfish, to appear fierce and to frighten his enemies. But these travelers are not his enemies. Nor are the children and adolescents in America's classrooms. And they are just as good as our four friends in the Emerald City at recognizing a humbug when they see one.

Ventriloquism works only with dummies. Real people need to speak for themselves. Real wizards need to listen. And listening, to become interested. And becoming interested, to care. And caring, to set themselves aside so that their apprentices may hear their own voices.