Abstract
This paper is an enquiry into the meaning of teaching. I argue that as a result of the influence of constructivist ideas about learning on education, teaching has become increasingly understood as the facilitation of learning rather than as a process where teachers have something to give to their students. The idea that teaching is immanent to learning goes back to the Socratic idea of teaching as a maieutic process, that is, as bringing out what is already there. Against the maieutic conception of teaching I argue for an understanding of teaching in terms of transcendence, where teaching brings something radically new to the student. I explore the meaning of the idea of transcendence through a discussion of Kierkegaard and Levinas, who both criticise the maieutic understanding of teaching and, instead, argue for a transcendent understanding of teaching—an understanding of teaching which they refer to as ‘revelation.’ Whereas Kierkegaard argues that revelation—which he understand as a process of ‘double truth giving’—lies beyond the power of the teacher, Levinas interprets revelation as the experience of ‘being taught.’ I use Levinas’s suggestion in order to explore the distinction between ‘learning from’ and ‘being taught by’ and argue that teaching has to be understood in the latter sense, that is, in terms of the experience of ‘being taught.’ To connect the idea of teaching to the experience of ‘being taught’ highlights that teaching can be understood as a process of ‘truth giving’ albeit that (1) this ‘gift’ lies beyond the powers of the teacher, and (2) the truth that is given, has to be understood in terms of what Kierkegaard calls ‘subjective truth’—which is not relativistic truth but existential truth, that is, truth that matters for one’s life. Understanding teaching in these terms also opens up new possibilities for understanding the role of authority in teaching. While my argument implies that teachers cannot simply and straightforwardly ‘produce’ the experience of ‘being taught’—so that what matters has to do with the conditions under which the gift of teaching can be received—their actions and activities nonetheless matter. In the final section of the paper I therefore argue that if we want to give teaching back to education, we need to resist the depiction of the teacher as a disposable and dispensable ‘resource’ that students can learn from or not, and need to articulate and enact a different story about the teacher, the student and the school.
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Notes
I wish to emphasise that the phenomenon that forms the occasion for my reflections in this paper is the way in which, through references to constructivist ideas and intuitions, the idea of teaching—and hence the idea of the teacher—seemed to have changed its meaning to such an extent that the teacher has become at most a facilitator of learning and in some cases just a fellow-learner. I am therefore neither analysing nor criticising constructivist ideas themselves but am interested in the way in which certain conceptions of constructivism—which obviously also include misconceptions—have contributed to what we might call the demise, the disappearance or, in a more post-modern mode, the end or even the death of the teacher. For a recent critical discussion of the idea of constructivism see Roth (2011).
I am, of course, referring to a particular idea of education, one that involves an educator, that is, someone who (aims to) educate which, in the context of the school, would be a teacher (but in the context of the family would be a parent). The point I will try to explore throughout this paper is for a teacher to be a teacher he or she needs to teach something, that is, needs to bring something new to the situation and this, as I aim to demonstrate, is radically different from just facilitating the process of learning.
I am aware that this exploration takes me in a direction which some may find difficult to give a place within the conversation of philosophy of education, as it implies engagement with religious language and theological argument. Some of this difficulty stems from the way in which the realm of meaning and rationality has been circumscribed in the Western world from the Enlightenment onwards—and, in a certain way, already well before the advance of the Enlightenment (see Caputo 2006, pp. 55–83). In this configuration religion has generally ended up as the other of meaning, the other of rationality and even the other of reason, resulting in a dualistic way of thinking that still exerts a powerful influence in our times. I do not wish to dismiss the reasons that have led to the construction of this set up, not in the least because much that has happened in the name of religion is indeed deeply problematic. But that does not mean that everything that has happened in the name of religion is automatically bad, just as not everything that has happened in the name of such notions as ‘democracy’ or ‘humanity’ is automatically and unequivocally good (see Biesta 2006). My ambition with this paper—an ambition which, within the limited space available, I will not be able to fulfil at the level of argument, but hope to be able to demonstrate in the way in which the argument is ‘performed’—is, in a sense, to transcend the particular way in which the realm of meaning and reason has been carved up, so that engagement with religious language and theological argument is no longer a matter of jumping over the fence of reason, but is part of overcoming—and perhaps even refusing—the very way in which this fence has been constructed in the first place.
The learning paradox is the predicament posed by Meno as to how one can go looking for something when one doesn’t know what one is looking for, and how can one recognise what one is looking for if one doesn’t know it. Meno poses the question as follows: "And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?" Socrates then reformulates the problem as follows: "I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire." (Plato's Meno, translated by Benjamin Jowett. Project Gutenberg EBook: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1643/1643-h/1643-h.htm; last accessed 5 June 2012).
Nola and Irzik (2005) do, however, note that while Plato and Socrates can be seen as the first enacting a constructivist pedagogy, they do not hold a constructivist theory of knowledge.
I would like to thank Jeroen Lutters for this insight. Note that to pay this compliment is not meant as a return of the gift of teaching; it is not a 'pay back'—see also note 8 below.
Caputo (2007, pp. 61–62) explains the difference as follows: "In objective truth, the accent falls on the objective contact of what you say (which Climacus calls the 'what'), so that if you get the objective content right (2 + 3 = 5) you are in the truth, no matter whether you are, in your persona subjectivity, a villain or an apostle. Nothing prevents a famous mathematician from being an ethical scoundrel. The existential subject is accidental and remains a disinterested spectator. But in subjective—or 'existential' truth, the accent falls on what Climacus calls the 'how,' on the way the subject lives, the real life and 'existence' of the subject. Here, where 'subjectivity is truth,' the subject is essential and passionately involved. In this case, even if what is said is objectively true—that God is love—if you are not subjectively transformed by that, if you do not personally have love in your heart, then you do not have the truth. (…) The difference is between having and idea of the 'true God' and having a 'true relationship to God.' Here the how of the relationship is all.".
It is important to note that to give authority to the teaching we receive should not be understood as the point where we 'return' the gift of teaching, where we pay for what is given to us, so as to annul the gift and turn it into an economy (see Derrida 1992).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Herner Saeverot, Stein Wivestad and Solveig Reindal for the invitation to contribute to this special issue. In this paper I have made use of ideas I presented earlier at the Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society USA in 2011 and at the Third Bergen Educational Conversation, also in 2011. I would like to thank those attending for their helpful comments and would particularly like to thank Samuel Rocha for his warning not to try to make the teacher into (a) God.
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Biesta, G. Receiving the Gift of Teaching: From ‘Learning From’ to ‘Being Taught By’. Stud Philos Educ 32, 449–461 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9312-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9312-9