Читать книгу Learning to Connect - Victoria Theisen-Homer - Страница 6

Martin Buber offers theoretical guidance on human relationships. In his most seminal book I and Thou (1958), he makes the distinction between two different kinds of relationships in which humans engage.^[14] First, there are “I–It” relationships, which are transactional and superficial. In an I–It relationship, one party uses another for a particular end or interacts with them in a limited capacity. New York Times columnist David Brooks provides this example: “A doctor has an I-It relationship with a patient when he treats him as a machine in need of repair.”^[15]

Buber contrasts this with the idea of “I–Thou” relationships, which are trusting, reciprocal, dialogical, and caring. In I–Thou relationships, a person meets and accepts another person, is fully present to that meeting, listens and responds to that person’s “whole being,” and views the other’s thoughts and feelings as equally valuable as their own. Drawing on Buber, scholars like Guilherme and Morgan have sought to further explain the difference between these two relationships: “It could be said that the I–It relation is an objective or instrumental relation that allows human beings to provide for and fullfil their basic needs and desires because we are material entities, but it could also be said that the I–Thou relation is a subjective or spiritual relation that allows human beings to fulfil themselves creatively, emotively and spiritually because we are also subjective entities.”^[16] According to Buber, I–Thou relationships require more energy, but are inherently more meaningful for both parties.

In schools, the power differential between teachers and students necessitates a unique kind of I–Thou relationship, one that Buber suggests requires a fine balance of “giving and withholding oneself, intimacy and distance.”^[17] Instead of perfect mutuality, the educator is responsible for taking the lead in working to recognize and receive all children as human beings (not just as students) before even attempting to teach them, modeling for students the foundation of meaningful relationships with others. But this can and should still be an I–Thou relationship, one built on dialogue, trust, responsiveness, and some degree of reciprocity, where teachers draw students into learning through personal connections and students engage and contribute in ways that inform the teacher.

In contrast, Buber criticizes educational relationships of “compulsion,” where teachers require students to regurgitate the knowledge they have dispensed without engaging with students. Buber believes that establishing I–Thou relationships with students will help them go on to contribute to building a better “community,” whereas relationships of compulsion will contribute to “disunion . . . humiliation and rebelliousness.”^[18]

Both Nel Noddings and Paulo Freire explicitly draw upon Buber’s idea of an I–Thou relationship in schools in their own conception of teacher–student relationships. For example, Freire evokes Buber in his description of dialogical relationships between teacher and students. He describes this as a horizontal “I-Thou Relationship” that is “nourished by love, humility, hope, faith, and trust.”^[19] Like Buber, Freire warns of the perils of more rigid, perfunctory, and hierarchical forms of teacher–student relationships: “Each time the ‘thou’ is changed into an object, an ‘it,’ dialogue is subverted and education is changed to deformation.”^[20] Freire further insists that humanizing teacher–student relationships are especially important for students from “oppressed” groups, who must learn that their voice matters, too.^[21] Noddings also cites Buber in her early work, as her conception of care ethics depends on the way that teachers see and receive their students. She, too, distinguishes between two types of caring in schools: (1) the active and engaged form of “caring as relation,” which follows the form of the “I–Thou” relationship, and (2) the passive virtue of “aesthetical caring” in which a person generally “care[s] about” another as they would an “object.”^[22] And in recent work, Noddings acknowledges that her conceptualization of care ethics is very much in line with Buber and Freire in that she thinks teacher–student relationships should be trusting, affirming, and responsive.^[23]

Buber, Freire, and Noddings all view teacher–student relationships as an active and dynamic exchange that is central to the enterprise of teaching. To them, relationships with students should not be passive or shallow, and they all warn against objectifying students. Instead, they establish the idea of humanizing relationships that are active and dynamic, caring and responsive.

These scholars do not advocate for an equal relationship per se, but a reciprocal one in which the teacher seeks to really “see” and respond to each student as a human being. But these responsive relationships with individual students are not intended to advance student individualism or narcissism. Instead, these theorists suggest that meaningful human relationships with teachers can prepare students to care for others, cultivate community among people, and fight for what Freire calls our “full humanity.” To them, meaningful teacher–student relationships are necessary to create a better world.^[24]

Scholars of culturally responsive teaching, culturally relevant pedagogy, and critical pedagogy have also taken up the call for more humanizing teacher–student relationships.^[25] Since schools have failed to serve students of color for generations, these traditions of educational scholarship call on teachers to reenvision the way they teach and interact with students from historically marginalized groups. Prominent educational scholars—like Geneva Gay, Gloria Ladson Billings, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and Angela Valenzuela—assert that students of color need teachers who are not simply “nice” but can form critical relationships with them. These scholars conceptualize such relationships as stemming from deep knowledge about individual students, coupled with social awareness and self-reflection on behalf of the teacher; such relationships manifest in active care for students as human beings and curricula and instructional practices that help empower students’ understandings of self and the world. While meaningful and humanizing teacher–student relationships are important for all students, these may be particularly important for historically marginalized students.^[26]