Another Kind of Love in Education: Whatever Love

Abstract

Educational theorists ranging from Plato, to Freire, to bell hooks, to Peter McLaren have theorized love as an essential factor in education. Whereas, typically, a particular kind of love (erotic love, caring love, etc.) is argued to be especially relevant for educational practice, what we do in this paper is to look at kinds of love that are constitutive for the relationship between teacher and student. Specifically, we outline four types of love that one might find in a classroom. We argue that from the perspective of Italian critical theorist Giorgio Agamben, the first three are problematic as they are not attentive to the potentiality of students to be whatever, and thus sacrifice potentiality of the child as such in the name of what must be or what is. The fourth type of love, on the other hand, embraces the potentiality of the child as a pure means rather than a means to another end. We further argue that there is an educational practice, what we are calling “Philosophy for Infancy” (P4I), that enables us to love our students’ potentiality. In contrast to Philosophy for Children, P4I exposes children to their potentiality rather than orienting specific potentialities towards determined outcomes. As such, P4I has its own, distinctive take on love in the classroom that differentiates it from other forms of love. It is our intention to develop this theory of love.