ABSTRACT
Teachers, like railway engines, run on a track with two rails. One call it faith is the gut feeling that there is such a thing as human completeness, that is, making the most of oneself. The other call it mission is the urge to be working alongside individual students, assisting them towards their own personal versions of that possibility. Stories and metaphors are safe but powerful ways of opening us up to the possibility of things being different. 'Meta-phor' means a carrying beyond; stories prepare us to be carried from what we already know into the realm of what we might discover. In Robert Graves' compendium The Greek Myths is recounted the archetype of the Trainer–Trainee relationship. When we come to the actual flight of Daedalus and Icarus its aptness as a metaphor for Vocational Training becomes even more apparent. The 'father–son' transference relationship between master and apprentice has in the myth become literally true, but not quite legitimate.
