Abstract
There has been a shift from teaching to learning, the so-called process of ‘learnification’, which promotes the idea that teaching should be primarily concerned with the creation of rich learning environments and scaffolding student learning. In doing so, this process of ‘learnification’ has also attacked the idea that teachers have something to teach and that students have something to learn from their teachers. The influence of constructivism, and thinkers like Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner in this paradigm shift is quite evident; however, this gives rise to a tension in what a teacher is and what teaching entails, because the teacher, by definition, is someone who has something to teach students, and not merely a facilitator of the learning process. Moreover, because of constructivism and ‘learnification’, current educational practices and policies seem to pay little attention to the importance of ‘relations’ and ‘the encounter with the Other’, which become merely desirable by-products. In this article I criticise constructivism and ‘learnification’ by proposing that the teacher is a community ‘builder’ and teaching a ‘situational revelation’, while also emphasising the importance of ‘relations’ in the educational process. The starting point for my discussion is a much neglected passage of I and Thou where Martin Buber discusses the importance of the ‘living centre’ [lebendigen Mitte] for ‘true community’ [Die wahre Gemeinde] formation.
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Notes
Buber makes use of the example of ‘contemplating a tree’ in I and Thou to instantiate these two relations. In the I-Thou relation: “I am drawn into a relation and the tree ceases to be an it…The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily as has to do with me as I must deal with it (Buber 1970: 57–58); in the I-It relation: “I can accept it as a picture…I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance…I can overcome its uniqueness…I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it” (Buber 1970:57-58). The point is that “I can look at the tree and I can simply be in relation to the tree. The tree is, I am, and the relation between the tree and me is there. On the other hand, in the I-It dimension, I can analyze everything about the tree to the point that it becomes a mathematical abstraction…an abstraction that bears no direct resemblance to the tree” (Roberts 2001: 324).
Hasidism is a popular religious movement that emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century in Eastern Europe. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it spread to other regions, notably Palestine and the United States. It has a focus on communal life and charismatic leadership as well as on ‘ecstasy’. ‘mass enthusiasm’, and close-knit group cohesion (cf. Hasidism Hasidism 2007).
In Meetings, Buber (1967:39) wrote of the relation of the zaddik (i.e. just in Hebrew) and the hasid (i.e. pious in Hebrew) while reflecting on his childhood experiences by saying: “…I could compare on the one side with the head man of the province whose power rested on nothing but habitual compulsion; on the other with the rabbi, who was an honest and God-fearing man, but an employee of the ‘directorship of the cult’. Here, however, was another, an incomparable; here was, debased yet uninjured, the living double kernel of humanity: genuine community and genuine leadership. The place of the rebbe, in its showy splendor, repelled me. The prayer house of the Hasidim with its enraptured worshippers seemed strange to me. But when I saw the rebbe striding through the rows of the waiting, I felt, ‘leader’, and when I saw the Hasidim dance with the Torah, I felt ‘community’. At the time there rose in me a presentiment of the fact that common reverence and common joy of soul are the foundation of genuine human community”.
This is a long standing view by Buber as this text, namely “In the Midst of History” (cf. Buber 1997:78–82), was written in the summer of 1933, and The Prophetic Faith in 1949. As the Nazis came into power in Germany and the persecution of Jews reached a new level, he argued that the study of history can take two forms, namely ‘from above’, which is more common amongst Gentiles, and ‘from below’, which is particular to Jews - and therefore his argument presents some theological nuances that appear to be surprisingly lacking in Avnon’s characterisation. Thus, the first surveys history ‘from above’ and understands that God acts through man, and: “…since God is all-powerful, the historical development which comes about through human agency takes the place because he endows men with power. These men who ‘make history’ fight for power, maintain and exert it. Their power is delegated by them by God; it is ‘power of attorney’” (Buber 1997:78). The second considers history ‘from below’ and understands it as a dialogue between man and God, because: “[I]n creating his creature, God, who is Omnipresent, gave it freedom of action, by virtue of which it can turn to or from him, and act for and against him” (Buber 1997:79) (cf. Morgan and Guilherme 2013a:73–74).
Jo Ritzen (Ritzen 1993; cited in Biesta and Miedema 2002:175–176), Minister of Education and Sciences between 1992 and 1994 in the Netherlands, found in a study in Dutch schools that a number of teachers were dissatisfied with the increasing emphasis on measurements and outcomes and on linking curriculum and the labour market. Teachers were concerned in also prioritising the quality of relationships with their students, helping students attaining a sense of right and wrong, reflecting on community and living together. As it can be gathered current concerns about ‘learnification’ and ‘constructivism’ in education have been in place for at least a few decades. Similar concerns have been reported in the UK, USA and Australia (cf. Newman and Jahdi 2009; Whitty and Edwards 1998; Fredman and Doughney 2012).
Plato’s Meno available online on http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html.
Plato’s Theaetetus available online on http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/theatu.html.
The following passage of this dialogue exemplifies this. “Theaetetus: I do not know what to say, Socrates, for, indeed, I cannot make out whether you are giving your own opinion or only wanting to draw me out. Socrates: You forget, my friend, that I neither know, nor profess to know, anything of! these matters; you are the person who is in labour, I am the barren midwife; and this is why I soothe you, and offer you one good thing after another, that you may taste them. And I hope that I may at last help to bring your own opinion into the light of day; when this has been accomplished, then we will determine whether what you have brought forth is only a wind-egg or a real and genuine birth. Therefore, keep up your spirits, and answer like a man what you think”.
Unfortunately, I do not have the space here to discuss this in further detail. However, it should be noted that Buber’s position is directly connected to Hasidism, and to the notion that the ‘divine sparks’ are present everywhere in reality, not just in things and people, but also moments and spaces. Thus, I-Thou relations can also be understood as the connecting of one’s ‘divine spark’ to the Other’s ‘divine spark’, whilst I-It relations represent the failing of doing so. In this reading, I-Thou relations become the key to the Jewish notion of Tikkun Olam, the dictum that we must ‘perfect the world’ (cf. Guilherme 2014). .
Tsabar (2014:79) notes this same point whilst commenting on Plato’s views in the Republic. He says: “[M]eaningful education demands conversion—‘a turning around of the soul’,.., that is, a transformation of consciousness and modes of thought and behaviour - a psychological turning around in which students transfer their inner perceptions ‘from the world of becoming into that of being’. “I note that Tsabar’s reading suggests that whilst Plato seems to defend the view that teaching is ‘the uncovering of what is already there in the mind’, he also understood learning as ‘a conversion of the soul’. This is an interesting and hybrid stance, which must be dealt with elsewhere.
In Jewish circles it is now associated with actions such as charity (tzedakah), kindness (gemilut hasadim) and programmes connected with social issues (cf. Guilherme 2014).
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Guilherme, A. Reflexions on Buber’s ‘Living-Centre’: Conceiving of the Teacher as ‘The Builder’ and Teaching as a ‘Situational Revelation’. Stud Philos Educ 34, 245–262 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9429-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9429-0