“If I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot enter into dialogue (Friere,90).”
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed fundamentally lays out that love is the backbone of education and without love there can be no liberation, freedom, or self actualization. Liberation, freedom, self actualization, all three of these words define the aims of education. To liberate individuals with new ideas, new possibilities, new ways of looking at the world, to free individuals from oppression, self doubt, dehumanization, and to enter into the process of self actualization allowing for compassion, conversation, true thinking, and hope are the ultimate goals of education.
It is human nature to love. It is conceivably the most fundamental characteristic of humans; as social animals we are built to work in groups and create relationships based on mutual love. Love is human nature and it is not just a word or phenomenon, but chemicals. Love can be sexual with hormones like testosterone and estrogen, but also love can be platonic involving chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin or even the feeling of attachment and care is a form of love triggered by chemicals like norepinephrine and serotonin. Love can take on many forms and has many definitions, but to bell hooks, love is “a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust (Teaching Communities,134).” This is a pedagogy of love revolving around the seemingly simple notion that love should exist in education, and without love, education becomes a draining and monotonous task. Using the ideas of Plato, Freire, and hooks and the definition of love by hooks, I aim to discuss why and how love is connected to education and necessary for the progression towards liberation, freedom, and self actualization. In the final paragraph, I will discuss and present my thoughts on a question that has remained in my head. Is love a necessity or an ideal in education?
Location:
My location for my pedagogy of love takes place in a college classroom. Similar to the core structure of this class, my class will take place in workshop fashion. Workshops are first designed by the leaders of the class until everyone understands what a workshop is, how they operate, and then the workshops will be designed by the other class participants. However, this class is fundamentally different from others because it is based on the philosophy of “DeCals” at UC Berkeley. DeCals allow students to teach their own class, with a faculty mentor, to the student population. Taking ideas from both DeCals and Out the Cave, my class will be a workshop based class led by a student with the help of a professor taken by both students and professors alike. Placing everyone on the same plane of authority, everyone taking the class should go by their preferred name, not by a formal title like doctor or professor. While a class just taken by students is necessary and can inspire students with new ideas and liberations, having professors in the classroom is essential as they are the ones who must cultivate, provide, and teach with love in the classroom. Friere speaks on this stating “the fear of freedom is greater still in professionals who have not yet discovered for themselves the invasive nature of their action, and who are told that their action is dehumanizing (156).” Without any change in current patterns and in higher education environments, professors will never sway out of their mindset of oppression and “dumping knowledge” into students. With this format of student and teacher teaching the students and teachers I hope to replicate this term by Friere called “teacher student with students-teachers” where “they [being the teacher and students] become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on ‘authority’ are no longer valid; in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world (Friere, 80).”
I chose to have my location be on a college campus for a multitude of reasons. First, in my personal experience, there is a far greater disconnect and power dynamic between educators and students in the collegiate environment (or any higher education environment) than the relationship between educator and students in secondary (high school and middle school) or primary (elementary) level. Second, the conversations and discussions that need to occur to make this pedagogy effective would work the best with older students such as college students and not middle schoolers. Along with the idea that hooks alludes to throughout her book that “there is not much passionate teaching or learning taking place in higher education today (Teaching to Transgress, 199)” and early hook’s mention that there is no concern or curiosity “among either traditional or radical educators (Teaching to Transgress, 7)” in discussing these topics in a higher education environment. This class is fundamental to bringing and encouraging the conversation of love and passion in both teaching and learning to college campuses.
Eros and Erotisms:
Before I begin the conversation about love in education, I think it is important to acknowledge, as bell hooks did, the notion of erotism. My definition of love and when I use the terminology love or relationship does not refer to love in a sexual way. As bell hooks admits when you bring your full self to any setting in this case a classroom, sexual attraction unknowingly, or knowingly can become a factor in your reasoning and body. However, as hooks writes, “we must move beyond thinking of those forces [eros, erotism, love] solely in terms of the sexual, though that dimension need not be denied (Teaching to Transgress, 194).” When writing and putting much thought into relationships and love, I began to think about all the training and workshops I have attended on the subject matter. Throughout my entire education I have been taught about love and relationships, however most intensely and thoroughly in highschool and college. I have learned about how to have healthy relationships with partners, parents, friends, teammates, however I have never been taught about teachers and how to deal with the power dynamic that inherently exists between a professor and student. As I am acknowledging this fact, I urge all readers to view the words “love” and “relationship” in non sexual way and understand that “even though there is a difference between romantic love and love between and teacher and pupil, these core aspects [as earlier defined:a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust] must be present for love to be love (Teaching Communities,131).”
Love in Education:
Love and its significance in education is not a new concept, philosophers like Plato have been discussing it since the birth of philosophy. While Plato’s Symposium speaks the most about love, he still alludes to it and speaks about it in his other works. Plato writes in the Apology
“I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company… I am the kind of person to be a gift of the god to the city you might realize from the fact that it does not seem like human nature for me to have neglected all my own affairs and to have tolerated this neglect now for so many years while I was always concerned with you, approaching each one of you like a father or an elder brother to persuade you to care for virtue.” (30e to 31c)
As the workshop instructed us when the class analyzed this quote, I ask that we “say that what he refers to as ‘rousing,’ ‘persuading,’ and ‘reproaching’ is something we might call dialogue (workshop 4, 2021).” For Socrates he expresses love (love of learning, love of philosophy, love of people, love of country) in the form of dialogue. Dialogue is how he communicates with the world and how he expresses his ideas and thoughts. Socrates always goes into a conversation with someone with the purpose of finding out the truth, and Plato then uses dialogue to figure out their understanding and their experiences about the matter or relating to the subject. Only through conversation and allowing your “whole” self to be a part of the conversation, like Socrates invites the other converstator to share his previous knowledge and notions of ideas, can true knowledge and learning take place. Plato is not alone in this assessment that through dialogue love can find its place in education, hook writes that “to engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries, the barriers that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of other differences (Teaching to Transgress, 130).” The act and process of even trying to break down “the barriers” and “cross boundaries” is one of love; it defines every word in hook’s definition “a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust (Teaching Communities,134).” This is the dialogue I seek to replicate in my pedagogy one that will eradicate the barriers and knock down the preconceived boundaries especially of “professional standing” to allow love to have a place in the classroom, conversation, and between the participants that will make everyone feel comfortable and open enough to bring their full self to the dialogue; love belongs and has a place in the classroom.
As I just discussed it is through dialogue that Plato expresses his love and for bell hook’s dialogue leads to this mutual love and Friere seems to agree with both of their assessments. When you read Pedagogy of the Oppressed almost every quote that has to do with love involves the word dialogue. When trying to wrap my head about dialogue and love I began to ask myself the question: are love and dialogue really that connected? Is it through dialogue that individuals are able to, as hooks wrote, let down their “barriers” and “cross boundaries” and feel love for each other? Or is it love that allows people to engage in a dialogue that brings their whole self to the conversation? I think the answer to this question is found in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. (Friere, 89)
Love is the “foundation of dialogue” and “dialogue itself.” To me, this quote is so powerful I think anyone could easily say that dialogue is a necessary part of education (easier than saying that love is a necessity as well) however true dialogue, productive dialogue, impactful dialogue cannot happen without love.
Is love a necessity or an ideal in education? This has been the question looming in the back of my head since I began this pedagogy. However, after discussing my pedagogy with the class, reflecting on the feedback, and now reflecting again as I answer this question I no longer see it as a question. Love is a necessity in education.
Education is suffering from narration sickness. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to “fill” the students with the contents of his narration— contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity. (Friere, 71)
When Friere writes education is “suffering from narration sickness” I begin to think of the countless seminars, lectures, classes I have been to in my lifetime where I was simply going through the motions. I have been an athlete my whole life I cannot even begin to imagine counting the hours, practices, drills I have accomplished. However, I can remember one thing my father would say to me; he said it for the first time once after a hockey practice and one more time I can remember after a lacrosse practice, when I was much older, “Chloe stop just going through the motions.” It was true, these were drills, both at my hockey and lacrosse practice, that I had done over 1000 times. I knew exactly what to do and how to do it just enough to complete the drill and get back in line to do it again. I was putting in no more effort than what was necessary to complete the drill. I wasn’t picking up the ground ball as if I was in a game and three girls were chasing behind me or turning sharp enough around the cone to work on my edges to the point of falling down (something they always say in hockey if you aren’t falling down during a drill you aren’t trying hard enough). This is exactly what happens when education is lacking love. Students attend classes like they are supposed to (or they skip), some may take notes, others not then they go back to their dorm, house, library complete their homework or memorize information for a test and then wake up and do it again. Day after day going through the same motions and it is not just the students, but the educators who fall victim to this “groundhog day” as well. It is no wonder education feels “motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable” and the words teachers say are “hollow, alienated.” To combat this, this is why we must have love in education.
In thinking about the question I posed to the class whether the love needs to come from the educator? From the students? Or from both? Through discussion and reflection, I am agreeing with my initial thoughts that love, this type of love that can transform an entire classroom environment and genuinely inspire, excite students, must come from the educator. Love can come from the students, and many times in my life I can think of a class that came together through love because the teacher wasn’t providing it. However, looking back at my experiences and feelings about these classes I think no differently upon these classroom environments then one lacking love completely. However, there is a distinct difference when I look back on classrooms that love came from the educator. I think about the authenticity, vulnerability, and compassion that existed in these classrooms. I look back at times in my education like this as positive experiences, ones that filled me with curiosity and deeply motivated me in my education. And is it not the goal of education to liberate, give freedom to think and inspire, and to allow for self-actualization? Then it is love that is imperative for any of these ideas to become possible. This is a pedagogy based on great education, education that doesn’t burn people out, that gives space for impactful thinking, and education filled with love. In one of our last workshops we discussed the concept of hope, and in dialogue it was stated that hope should not be thought of as just optimism. With that being said, I hope love has a place in education and to make it understood that love in education is not shocking or radical, it is just fundamental.
Works cited.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary ed., Continuum, 2000.
hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Routledge, 2003.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994.
Plato. “Apology.” Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, by G.M.A. Grube, Hackett, 1997, pp. 17–37.