Some Initial Thoughts on the Relationship of Teacher to Student to Teacher

For the sake of this discussion I adopt Newmann and his colleagues (Newmann, Byrk, & Nagaoka, 2001; Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1995; Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995; Newmann & Wehlage, 1993) three-fold notion of authenticity applicable to educational practice.

1. That work assigned to or created by students has a value to those students beyond the four walls of the school.

2. That work engaged in by students is academically rigorous.

3. That the product of student work is produced for an audience beyond that of the teacher in the classroom.

Additionally, for the sake of this discussion I adopt Levinas’ (1969) position that the ethical focus of one’s personal responsibility to the other is an ongoing, permanent and obligatory availability.

Within the scope of authenticity and availability I want to examine the role of teacher as ethical facilitator in any given classroom, from the earliest grades to the most advanced levels. A question guiding this inquiry focuses on the epistemological issue of how knowledge is internalized by a knower in the presence of a teacher. I assert that all learning, not just some, not even most, but all learning takes place in the presence of a teacher. This foundational assumption does not, however, require that one’s teacher be formally designated. Quite the contrary, it simply asserts that an active knower without some form of expert guidance or teaching taking place internalizes nothing. In this sense the “teacher” need not even be human. It could be a segment of text, a photograph, a piece of music, or a scenic landscape. The only requirement for the “teacher” is that it be something external to the active knower. Unlike Cartesian doubt (Descartes, 1988), where the presence of self, in the form of doubt, is privileged, I am arguing that knowledge is internalized only when there is a reciprocal relationship between a teacher and a student. When viewed through this lens learning is profoundly guided by cultural, linguistic, special and economic contexts found in juxtaposition to and in combination with one another in both social and private contexts (Vygotsky, 1978).

Learning, as evidenced by the internalization of concepts, ideas, facts, and assumptions also requires that the learner, as self, relinquish that selfhood to the alternative proposed by the other. This act of internalization requires one to look outside the self with a gaze toward the other; the other serving the self as guide or teacher; it is grounded in the act of making the self available to the other. The relationship is reciprocal, residing in a focus on an ongoing, permanent and obligatory availability of the self in relationship to the other. The self as learner must respond to the question, “Where are you?” when asked by the other, with “Here I am! I am available to you.” The other, serving in the capacity of teacher, must respond to the identical question from the self by uttering the very same response. In short, the teacher/student—student/teacher relationship itself, as seen through the lens of the ongoing, permanent and obligatory relationship of the availability of the self to other – other to self, creates within itself the ethics of classroom engagement.