Chapter 9: Reconsidering the Rhetoric of Engagement: I and Thou in the Classroom

All too often, neoliberal educational rhetoric demands that students engage curricula that are remote from their own experiences and immediate needs to support national priorities focused upon global economic competition. Essential knowledge and skills are defined by standards, dispensed by teachers, and assessed by standardized tests in a model Paolo Freire characterized as “banking” education. Nearly a century ago, John Dewey opposed this model of education, arguing that if any genuinely educative process is to take place, curricula must meaningfully engage the knowledge and proficiencies of students and their communities. Dewey’s perspective, then, casts the teacher as the mediator between the student and the curriculum, engaged with the student in “conjoint” inquiry. As I will argue here, implicit in this construction is a notion of reciprocity that requires that the teacher–student relationship be one of “empathic engagement,” or what Martin Buber termed the I/Thou relationship. Incorporation of the works of Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson deepens our understanding of the complexity of this teaching and learning process, and moves us to consider deficiency in terms of the interaction, rather than assigning pathology to the student. Critically, discomfort with discussions of the spiritual aspects of teaching, as well as fear that this might equate to the imposition of religion in the realm of public education, may hinder robust considerations of teacher-student interactions. It is vital, however, that teacher educators take up these complex and difficult issues if we are to prepare teachers for work in the challenging arena of public education.