Punctualisation is very important in the relationship between the teachers and the learners. Their relationship is of mutual recognition of role. There are two fundamental factors which establish the relationship: one is the respect due from the students to the teacher; the second is the service that the teacher offers to the students. The teacher serves the purpose of the students and not vice versa; but the students obey the teacher, and not vice-versa. If the students do not give respect, the teacher will not teach; and if the teacher does not teach, the students will not give respect. Now, who will start? The punctualisation process is what starts the process of communication. Is the respect given by the students to the teacher what makes him serve the students? Or is it the other way round, i.e.: is the teacher who, by serving the needs of the students, provokes their respect? The wrong starting steps may jeopardise the whole relationship. Surely, the relationship works well when it works both ways. But who starts building or breaking? As a teacher, I can stop serving you, if you start disrespecting me. But, in fact, you may feel that you have started disrespecting me, because I have stopped serving you.
Everybody reacts negatively because he perceives the other’s reaction as negative. Both are acting in self-defence but the self-defence of the other is perceived as an aggression. It’s important to think about who starts the creative process and the capacity of the creative process to continue, in spite of situations that are perceived as aggressions.
This is true in all relationships- in team relationships for instance. The advantages of having a team are many; but a person who is working more than the others will start thinking that it is not in her/interest to work so much and have the others take most of the profit: "If I was working only for self-interest, I could get more benefit than from sharing it". The team dynamics then starts breaking down. The typical reaction is "I’m not going to work much because the others aren’t". When the team starts moving in that direction, then a negative spiral starts and one starts working less, with the result that the others start working less and it becomes worse and worse. No work thus gets done at the end and the team breaks down. The opposite spiral is if one thinks that one should put in more work because the others are doing so. We would like to partake of the benefits and advantages of being part of a team that is producing results.
These processes are ruled by the punctualisation process. Who is starting the creation to which I respond with a creative approach and who starts destruction to which I respond with a destruction approach. You must never see the product as something that stands on its own. Sentences are always a part of a global process of communication and they get their meaning from this global process.