SCHOOL

If your school dream was negative, however, and you hated school, then your dream may be suggesting that you have not resolved your feelings about this life experience. You need to reassess your school days from an adult perspective.

If the school was ruined or dilapidated in your dream, this can represent the collapse of youthful illusions; your dreaming mind is urging you not to dwell on the past but to move on. Another interpretation of dreams about being back at school is that you are feeling suffocated by rules, regulations and restrictions in your waking life that are preventing you from leading the life you want to live. It can sometimes refer to feelings of rejection, aloneness and stress on leaving your mother for the first time. Your dreaming mind may also be urging you to seek out knowledge or learn new skills in waking life. Specific places or rooms in the school represent attitudes learned at school. For example, the library is a place of knowledge and stored information; the gymnasium is associated with physical health and a place where you take risks. School clothes suggest the social image you developed at school and school friends, those of your attitudes that you developed at school.

In general, dream of high school or secondary school are not so much about the lessons you learned there, but about social concerns or the desire to fit in at all costs. Whether you couldn’t find a classroom or were unprepared for an exam, the primary concern of such dreams centers around your own abilities and what others think of you. Dreams set in high school reflect your insecurities and social fears.

If you dream of the school playground, this represents the importance of relaxation or recreation to balance the time you spend working.

Not wanting to join in with school games suggests an inability to switch off from work, whilst reluctance to leave the playground suggests a lack of discipline.

If you dream of bullying and are identifying with the victim, you may be expressing old memories of school experiences that were upsetting. Alternatively, the bully might represent a domineering figure in your current life or aspects of your own character that are domineering.

Example: ‘1 am back at school on the first day of the new school year. At this point it can vary slightly, but I always feel out of place, usually because I am older than the other girls now or—most common—because my uniform is incorrect and it is time for assembly—I went to a very strict convent school. There is always some feeling of panic and quite often loneliness’ (PH). PH is still uncomfortable about who she is as a person.

The influence of the school years still nags at her, that she ought to be other than she is. Not having a nature that easily conformed, she was led to feel isolated and an alien.

Places in school: particular abilities we have. Library, our knowledge and learning ability; stored information. Gymna­sium: taking risks in learning something new; daring; physical health. Classroom: study, relationship with authority.

Example: ‘In the bathroom area, a school class was being held, so I had to wait for my bath, steam would be bad for the books. I didn’t have any soap with me but I was going to wash my hair and could use the shampoo’ (Leonie K). Leonie is getting rid of attitudes or a self image developed at school, shown as shampooing her hair.

The new attitudes of letting off steam would not have been acceptable at school.

Idioms: of the old school; tell tales out of school, old school tie; well schooled.

See schoolteacher under roles.

• 2. A picture of the education system in the world.

Dreams Positive:

Depending on your personal view of school, you will have a different interpretation.

The most universal of course is a place of learning, and it speaks of the knowledge you have attained over the years.

• If you dream that you pass a test or go up a grade in school, it means that you have passed a spiritual test and that you are ready to move forward.

• It is an indication that you qualified in the task that the Lord gave you to do and now you are ready to be promoted to a new level.

• Of course with that new level will come more testing and learning.

• Matthew 25:21 His lord said to him, Well done, [you] good • and faithful servant: you have been faithful over a few things, I will • make you ruler over many things: enter into the joy of your lord.

• This may speak of spiritual maturity or of a ministry office.

• If you dream of going to a school or University, it means that there is some knowledge that you lack and the Lord wants you to receive it.

• If you dream of a school you attended in the past and your emotions are intense, then what you are looking at is a good example of a healing or a purging dream relates to that era in your life.

Negative: If you dream that you have to write the same test repeatedly or repeat a grade, it means that you have not learned the lesson that you needed to learn in life.

• If you keep dreaming of a school you attended in the past, it could mean that there are still hurts from this area that are troubling you.

See also: Buildings.