Educational work as a “labor of love”

Abstract

The following paper examines the unique, human, and pedagogical nature of the encounter between educators and their students. It discusses the potential for alienation inherent in the educator teaching encounter (a potential embodied in what I term “the first fifteen seconds of anxiety”). The paper goes on to examine the possibility of constituting an alternative relationship based on pedagogy of mutual and non-alienated recognition rooted in an interpersonal and dialogical relationship. This conceptualization is performed through a consideration of Martin Buber’s notion of the “dialogical relationship” and the pedagogical implications of the “love relationship” in Erich Fromm’s philosophy. The article claims that the special quality of educational work must be understood in the context of its economic irrationality and unconceptualizable foundations. In order to clarify its existential characteristics and paradoxical, elusive, and emotional nature, it locates the unique economic nature of educational work in the “dialogical relationship” and in the four elements of the educational relationship: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

Introduction

The following article examines the special nature of the encounter between educators and their classes. School teachers’ quality of work is unique not only in the quantity of work required of them but also primarily in the complexity and nature of their relationship with students. In schools teaching work, practitioners are confronted with human, emotional, and intellectual challenges that often go far beyond those acknowledged in other types of work. The special nature of educational work necessitates establishment of intimate, respectful, and honest relationships. Such relationships are based primarily on the educator’s responsibilities toward the well-being of the child and towards his/her moral education.

In that spirit, the educational system usually distinguishes between the role of the educator as a “teacher,” who is in charge on teaching certain subjects and the roll of the educator as a “mentor” or “tutor,” who beyond his/her formal teaching serves as the “guardian of the child.” In secondary school, in addition to being a disciplinary teacher the educator is also in charge of the class’ social and administrative affairs. Beyond his/her role as professional teacher of a certain discipline, the educator meets her/his class once a week to discuss all sort of educational matters—social and political issues, organizing field trips and school parties, listening to music, and solving social and personal problems within the class. The educator is expected to be in a close touch with every one of his/her students, to meet each of them separately, and to help them solve any problem they might have.

In this paper, I argue that such an extensive task cannot be conceived in the individualist, instrumentalist, and materialistic terms in which professional and personal success is normally defined in contemporary culture. In addition I argue that the virtues of educational work need to be understood in view of an economic and utilitarian irrationality that can only be grasped through a new and radical perspective. In the following sections I offer a consideration of a possible alternative system to traditional conceptions of the human being and education. This is done through an investigation of the human and pedagogical implications of the conception of the “dialogical relationship” as articulated in the philosophy of Martin Buber (1878–1965) and the pedagogical implications of the concepts of “attachment” and “love” that Erich Fromm (1900–1980) develops in The Art of Loving (1956).

On the threatening nature of the “first fifteen seconds”

One of an unexperienced teacher’s greatest anxieties lies in what I term the “first 15 seconds” of the encounter with a new class. These initial moments before the “encounter proper” can be marked by existential terror. Thirty-five pairs of eyes staring back at you, checking you out (in fear, anticipation), and scrutinizing you: your body structure, diction, posture. In the next 15 seconds you will focus your gaze on them: at first they will seem a mob—a faceless mass of teenagers, boys and girls, the smell of fresh paint, and the sound of mumbling whispering in the air. Then you will begin to take note of their faces, their bodies moving in their seats: the heavy kid in the last row, the punk rocker with purple hair in the corner, the curly-haired boy with his head resting on the desk (perhaps asleep), the bespectacled geek at the desk nearest to the door, absorbed in a book. Fifteen seconds of sheer horror. You fix them in your gaze and they fix you in theirs. What have you got to do with each other? You did not choose them and they did not choose you. Who are these characters whose fate has become intertwined with your own?

The first 15 seconds of anxiety are powerful because they contain a disturbing presupposition about man’s condition in the world, which holds that the foundation of the human encounter with the other is not necessarily intuitive, natural, or self-evident. The difficulty originates in the incapacity of a consciousness based on an individualist and materialistic conception to validate the existence of the other. In this epistemological framework our sense of self is regarded as almost certainly intuitive. Man lives within himself—he is aware of his own inner complexity, multi-dimensionality, fears, desires, depth. He knows that he thinks, experiences pain, that he is a human subject. As such, in his own eyes, he deserves respect, concern, understanding. Descartes’ famous proposition cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I am”) lends this “intuitive” sense a philosophical validity—the individual self is a certainty, he exists. The problem begins in the encounter with the other. The other is not me; he is different, situated “there,” outside the self—he is a hypothesis. The classroom may be filled with people, and their externality may be rather clearly perceptible to me. However, I can know nothing of their interiority, because it is inaccessible, hidden. Their bodies may be subject to my sensory consciousness, like other things in the room (chairs, chalkboard, desks), but there can be no certainty regarding their existence as deep, thinking, sensitive subjects like me.

Now, and because my consciousness finds it hard to grasp the other as a subject (particularly when he/she appears within a group), I may assume, somewhat “intuitively,” that his existence is similar to that of other bodies and objects in space, as an object among objects. Such an egotistical attitude fosters solipsism: the conception that posits that there is nothing external to the self, and therefore that the entire world and everything in it are nothing but means to my own ends. Thus it turns out that beyond the uncertainty that characterizes the other’s existence, he also becomes a real impediment for me. This is because in his very (speculative) existence, the other limits my own (unquestionable) existence—in his own demands and desires, he imposes restrictions on my own demands and desires, as well as my wholeness as a human being, my potentialities, my liberty. The other’s presence marks, then, the limits of the self. In such an epistemological framework the other turns out to be an obstruction, a limitation, a restraint—“Hell,” Sartre (1946: 47) asserted in a similar context, “is other people.”

Returning to the classroom, under the materialistic logic of the “first 15 seconds,” the personages sitting before the teacher, these youths, are not only objects but also a clear existential threat. The pedagogical implications of this existential perspective are fully concrete: in the mechanical, economic, and material world in which objects exist, one cannot avoid friction and dissonance. Such a pedagogical space is one of ongoing calculation, considerations and outputs (Will they cooperate? How much work is required? Will they pass or fail? Do I give them reinforcement? Will they pay me for this? How much and when?). In such an instrumentalist space, every event, dilemma, signals further impoverishment and attrition. Such a mechanical space is marked by persistent mutual threat and terror tactics in the name of regulating and controlling those who do not fall in line willingly. (How will the students behave on the annual school trip? How will parents, the principal, the supervisor respond? What will they say about me on parent–teachers’ day?) Such a space is dominated by gibberish, superficial relationships between disconnected persons, objects. It is a discourse in which everyone waits their turn to speak and no one truly listens. It is a discourse of memorization, in which ready-made phrases, ideas, formulas, and patterns are reiterated over and over again. Such a space is marked by alienation and estrangement, non-belonging, loneliness, ridicule, intolerance to difficulty and difference, long hallways, barred windows, grade lists on notice boards, and eyes that never meet—a space which everyone longs to leave: at the end of the lesson, the school day, the school year.

The “first fifteen seconds” are threatening because they reinforce the admonitions of “spontaneous,” individualist, egoistic intuition, which fails to grasp the humanity of the other. They are horrifying because they distill the threat embodied in the penetrating and limiting gaze of the other directed at us. They are disturbing because of the nagging warnings of cold and calculating reason against the pointlessness of entering a space of ongoing struggle, burnout and hardship. Worst of all, the mechanical nature of the “first fifteen seconds” of anxiety is a self-fulfilling prophecy: causes are always actualized in effects; threats unfailingly turn out to be real. Students with frightening appearances will always do harm; students whose behavior is strange and distant will always be alienated; “difficult” and uninterested classes will never be cooperative and respectful, and will always be exhausting. In such space all promissory notes are settled: all one’s fears turn out to be justified, all threats are realized, and all one’s gloomy intuitions are revealed as correct.

On the potential inherent in the “first 15 seconds” of the classroom encounter

A philosophical expression of the instrumental nature of the “first 15 seconds” in the classroom can be found in the concept of the Ich-Es [I-It] relationship coined by Martin Buber (1923/1970) in his book I and Thou [Ich und Du]. For Buber, Ich-Es refers to man’s relation to the world and other human beings as merely objects. It is an alienated and impersonal relation of cold indifference. “He who lives in an Ich-Es relation,” writes Bergman (1974: 257), “sees things put side by side alongside each other—because things are indifferent to our exploitation and we are indifferent to them.” In such a space, we encounter the other not out of an acknowledgment of his inherent value, but rather in impersonal, functional and instrumental way—as an object to be used, consumed, categorized and analyzed. When we are in an Ich-Es relationship the other does not interest us—not his/her ideas and not his/her self: in our “dialogue” with him we position ourselves as listeners, but in fact we are only waiting for him to stop speaking and listen to what we have to say. When we meet a new person, we pretend to be curious—but in fact we already know everything about him, from his surname to his gait to his mode of dress. Such is the Ich-Es relationship, a sort of “pseudo-encounter:” full of prejudices, calculations, existential heaviness and oppressive emotion: a relationship devoid of respect, attentiveness, spontaneity, genuine affection or a kind spirit (cf. Avnon, 1998).

However, Buber rejects the notion that the Ich-Es condition, in which man exists in isolation from both the world and the other, is the ontological condition of man in the world. Accordingly, Buber in Al Hamaaseh Hachinuchi [On Educational Practice] (1973: 240–241) repudiates psychological and existentialist conceptions that place the human essence, each in their own way, upon a foundation of the singular human being–the solitary individual. These individualist conceptions, which exalt man in his isolation, detachment, and separation from the world, carry within them the seeds of the alienation, pessimism, and determinism characteristic of modern man. Man’s essence and power, on the other hand, as Buber holds, are not realized in the private sphere, in man’s existence and attitude as a solitary and isolated individual, but rather precisely in relation to the other, in the dialogue in which he engages in the interpersonal sphere. Thus it turns out that the Ich-Es relationship (which casts its heavy shadow on the “first 15 minutes”) is actually not an ontological manifestation of man’s existential condition in the world but rather a function of an underdeveloped, partial and false consciousness. ¹ The alternative is what Buber terms the Ich-Du, or “I-Thou,” relationship (embodied in the present paper by the “sixteenth second”).

In the Ich-Du relationship the “I” no longer confronts an alienated object foreign to him but rather engages in a reciprocal relationship with a subject very much like himself. In this relationship, the armor of the other as object is shattered and he becomes a subject, one’s “fellow man.” In this framework, the mechanical, instrumental, and manipulative character of the human domain is instantly diffused, and the possibility emerges of constituting a new ethical system based on dialogue, mutual respect, and collaboration. The question then arises as to what form this new system might assume and what its pedagogical orientations might be.

Buber, in Besod Siach [In the Secrecy of Dialogue] (1973: 39) describes the recognition of the other as a “breakthrough” (pritsa) toward the “Thou.” This breakthrough is neither intellectual nor motivated by an aspiration to knowledge, but rather by a desire for an interpersonal connection and reciprocity, a desire that Buber terms “the attachment impulse” (yetser hahitkashrut) (Buber, 1973: 23, 243). ² In the field of the dialogical encounter, the same miracle of recognizing the other as one’s fellow man, of a meeting between subjects leading to a transformation of reality, becomes possible. The dialogical relationship turns out, then, to be a gateway, not only to the other, but also to the constitution of selfhood. The self and the other need each other to become a full-fledged personality—“In this sense,” Barzilai (2000: 280) notes, “the other is not the limit of the self but rather the meeting point with the self.” Realization of one’s humanity is thus rendered contingent upon the establishment of dialogical relations with the other. In this manner, the dialectical nature of dialogue also becomes clearthe encounter between self and other is to a large extent an encounter with the self (Buber, 1962: 110).

The special nature of the dialogical relationship reveals the pedagogical potential latent in the “sixteenth second.” The moment when the encounter begins—not in theory or in the abstract, not “sometime in the future,” but in the present: in coming together, in speech, in gesture, and in deed based on intention (Buber, 1973: 115). Educational work, then, generates the first pulse in a series of situations in which the teacher gains experience establishing genuine Ich-Du relationships with students. ³ The foundation of these relationships is, first and foremost, the readiness of the teacher (“the I”) to engage in an encounter with the student (“the Thou”) and to respond to him. This response is not necessarily directed at student’s academic or social achievements nor is it an expression of educator’s satisfaction with students or of the spontaneous admiration that teachers feel for students, as they do not choose them at the outset of the school year; but rather they are given to them, jumbled together, as a done deal. ⁴ Educators’ responsiveness to their students, on the other hand, is a kind of acknowledgment of the other’s subjective uniqueness (Buber, 1973: 250–251). It is an expression of respect for his/her ontological presence in the world, his/her selfhood. This kind of responsiveness must guide, as a constant, every educational activity and encounter we have with students (even, and perhaps mainly, when we are exasperated or disappointed with them).

An important pedagogical expression of the dialogical relationship is embodied in the concept of “inclusion” [hakafa] articulated by Buber in his book Besod Siach (1973: 253–255). Inclusion refers to the sense of reciprocity between partners in a dialogical relationship and their capacity to simultaneously fulfill both sides of the equation in the encounter—the self and the other. Within such a state of inclusion, the person can “know” the soul of one’s fellow human being as if he were part of himself—and without losing or compromising his own selfhood or consciousness. The inclusive relationship deepens and expands the scope of attachment between self and other; it is multilayered and does not necessarily require verbal dialogue—when it occurs in the space of the classroom it can also manifest itself in silence, a smile, a gaze, a head movement, or a hand gently placed on a shoulder.

Buber (1973: 258–259) emphasizes that educators must recognize and prepare themselves for the fact that in child education inclusion is never symmetrical and reciprocity never complete. This determination stresses the privileged status of educators given their standing as authorities and professionals—educators possess knowledge, appraise students and make choices for them. Educators’ responsibility is enacted, then, in their role as filterers of the world for students (Buber, 1973: 245): educators hold exams, explain concepts, and make clarifications. Accordingly, educators must be intelligent and skilled in their teaching fields and avoid to the best of their ability error and confusion (as their intelligence or confusion is inevitably transmitted to their students). However, they should not become exasperated when students get confused or expect them never to make mistakes in the course of their studies.

This relationship, which is immanent to child education, places upon the teacher an unusual degree of responsibility (Buber, 1973: 259). At the core of such responsibility is a commitment to continual alternation between the position of the teacher and the position of the student—while protection their dignity and integrity. Educators’ sense of responsibility thus instructs them to beware of closing the distance between themselves and their students lest the boundaries between the two collapse entirely (Buber, 1973: 257). Such a pedagogical orientation places no particular emphasis on instructional relations per se, but rather on the teacher’s responsibility and the relationship through which educators get to know students and learn how to bring out the best in them (Buber, 1973: 239–240). A tremendous endeavor such as this has no set boundaries or rules—it demands flexibility, thought, and attentiveness to constantly changing circumstances and conditions. There are times when educators must set clear limits and maintain a distance between themselves and students, and others where they must get closer. Such things cannot be prescribed by a theoretical codex (as detailed and thought-out as it might be), or some abstract educational idea (as attractive as it might be). In order to be responsive and responsible, educators must be present in the dialogical relationship with all of their being. They must be fully immersed in the reality of the dialogical relationship—in concrete time and space. It is not merely any system or ideological position that embodies one’s essence as “teacher,” but rather one’s presence and responsiveness (Buber, 1973: 249). At the end of the day it is the teacher’s being that carries the most lasting pedagogical effect; her/his experience in life, his/her good will, her/his spiritual wealth, his/her ability to become a role-model for his/her students: hence Buber’s conclusion that it is not teaching that educates but rather the teacher. ⁵

Based on the above, we can encapsulate at this point Buber’s position regarding the frightening and excruciating nature of the “first fifteen seconds.” Underlying the Ich-Es relationship is a partial, “unilateral” conception, which holds that man is “essentially a solitary actor” (Buber, 1973: 241–242). This misconception prevents man from acknowledging that one can only realize oneself (the “I”) and one's concrete liberty through affirmation of and communication with the other. ⁶ The transition to the “sixteenth second,” therefore, must be based on faith in the world and man (Buber, 1973: 255).

Below I offer a further perspective into the logic of the “sixteenth second” and its unique pedagogical manifestations based on Erich Fromm's concepts of “love” and “giving.”

The “relationship” as love and giving

In The Art of Loving (1956/2001), Erich Fromm offers an interesting perspective on the special nature of the “sixteenth second.” Building on Buber’s concept of “attachment” [hitkashrut], Fromm (1956: 15–16) argues that the origin of man’s condition of suffering and alienation in modern life is his/her incapacity to form meaningful connections with his/her environment. This incapacity, in Fromm’s (1956) view, echoes the primordial ontological condition of man in the world—one of schism and internal contradiction. ⁷ By this logic, the human being is born helpless into the world as a kind of anomaly and contradiction. He is both subject and object: part godly, part beastly; part eternal, part ephemeral; part private, part social—and the two elements are interdependent and intertwined. Healthy human development, Fromm (1956) claims, is contingent upon one’s ability to maintain the tension between the contradictory elements: to transcend one’s own fixed and selfish existence, and communicate with the world and the other outside oneself while not being consumed by either.

This unique and paradoxical form of attachment is possible, according to Fromm, only in the paradoxical framework of the “love relationship.” Here one can experience a oneness with something or someone outside oneself, “under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality” (1956: 20). The paradoxical nature of love, of difference in unity, succeeds in shattering the mechanical and instrumental nature of human existence. “Love,” writes Fromm (1956: 20–21) “is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him\her to be himself, to retain his\her integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

Again the question arises as to how this miraculous transformation of a love relationship can occur and what the conditions for it might be. Fromm’s position on this point is not unlike Buber’s regarding the conditions for establishing an Ich-Du relationship (Buber, 1973: 115). Notwithstanding its sublimity, the love relationship is not theoretical or an abstract value, but rather, first and foremost, an activity occurring in reality. “Love,” writes Fromm (1956: 22), “is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a ‘standing in,’ not a ‘falling for.’ In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.”

The concept of “giving” takes on meaning in two entirely different contexts: in the mechanical and instrumental context of the “first fifteen seconds” giving is regarded as the negation of something: as surrender or impoverishment. In such a mechanical framework giving assumes a meaning only when it is accompanied by receiving something in return. Otherwise, as Fromm (1956: 22) suggests, the giver feels cheated—that something has been taken from him without recompense. Fromm (1956: 23) adds that some seek to overcome the element of lack inherent in the concept of giving by turning it into a “virtue,” an “ideal.” They feel that giving comes with a modicum of pain, that it expresses a sacrifice made by the giver, which renders it transcendent or “sublime” (a captivating and troubled “sublimity,” which serves as worthy compensation for one’s suffering). However, under such an “economic” concept of relationship, the losing nature of the investment ultimately comes to light (too much individual attention, too many endless hours, too much paper grading, too many conversations with parents and on and on). So, in order to minimize one’s losses, the burnout mechanism takes over, enthusiasm wanes, “outlay” is reduced (this is the point where the side-effects of mutual alienation start to appear: contempt, violence, cynicism, disregard, etc.). Such a system superficializes and weakens the teacher–student relationship. Thus disillusionment sobers teachers from their initial enthusiasm into the self-fulfilling prophecy—a terrible bargain, which should never have been made in the first place.

The concept of giving as a “virtue” and ideal does not hold much promise either. The same teachers who relate to the giving element in the educational work in negative terms, as an act of sacrifice, ultimately, after a year or two (or at the termination of their grants), suffer disappointment. In the un-air-conditioned confines of the classroom, lofty ideals are fragmented into small deeds, devoid of inherent purpose or significance (another Bible lesson, another student struggling in advance of an exam, another phone call to a parent of a child who misbehaved). In the midst of such daily on going labor, the work of reform loses its charm, and well-articulated complaints ensue about the “impossible” nature of the institution and those in its employ, or about “genuine/revolutionary reform,” which can only come from without. ⁸

In the biophilic framework of the “sixteenth second,” on the other hand, giving has an entirely different meaning. Giving in this case needs no extrinsic incentive but rather is a means to its own end; it is a positive expression of “potency” and vitality. “In the very act of giving,” Fromm (1956: 23) writes, “I experience my strength, my wealth, my power.” Such an empowering experience enriches the giver and fills him with joy and strength—he/she becomes significant in his\her own eyes and in the eyes of others. So, as in the case of the Buberian dialogical relationship (XXXX: 115), the dialectical nature of the love relationship is also revealed—a person who gives something to his fellow man also gives of himself, including some of the most valuable things he possesses: his personality, time, geniality, attention, understanding, wealth of knowledge, kind spirit—all expressions of what is alive within him. “In thus giving of his life,” writes Fromm (1956: 24–25),

he enriches the other person, he enhances the other’s sense of aliveness by enhancing his own. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving implies to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life.

The creative value of giving is realized, then, in the present moment of the act itself (rather than in extrinsic consideration or calculation after the fact).

Giving in its positive sense, as “potency,” is an expression of the encounter proper: educators meet their students for the first time—they did not get to choose them. They rupture the empty shell of “selfish intuition” and calculating intellect, which caution against the loss entailed in the encounter with the other. They do this deliberately and actively—through movement, the gaze, the gesture. Under the skin of outer appearance they meet their students for the first time eye to eye. They notice in the dialogical encounter, the slight turning up of the corner of the mouth in a smile; in the handshake, the delicacy of the fingers; while walking together in the hallway, the special sense of humor. They encounter students as fellow human beings and extend themselves to them. And in extending themselves, they transform the encounter into a “dialogue:” mutual inspiration and growth. Then the creative potency of the love relationship becomes apparent—in the act of giving to the class, educators see their own image in the eyes of their students, and it is bigger and better than themselves. In such moments of grace, teachers can actually become, if they so choose, the figure reflected in the eyes of their students. Thus they are given the opportunity to grow and empower themselves—to be better people by performing good deeds, to become richer by being more generous, more meaningful by being present, wiser by offering good and considerate advice. And in the act of giving, this magnificent transformation takes place when educators realize their students are not a limit or limitation but rather a point of encounter and a sign of growth. Thus the instrumental and mechanical classroom atmosphere breaks down, and human and instructional relations are transformed.

On the four elements of the teaching relationship

Based on the above, it emerges that the special nature of the “sixteenth second” represents a fundamental transformation in the conception of human and educational space. Through the “love relationship,” mechanical education disintegrates, and human and instructional relations in the classroom are profoundly altered. However, for instructors and educators engaged in teacher training the constitutive status of the attachment–love relationship presents a rather difficult problem. This is because the special nature of the “sixteenth second” makes for a situation in which precisely the most profound and important element in pedagogy almost completely defies conceptualization, and hence is difficult to communicate and teach.

Indeed, the unique pedagogical nature of the “attachment relationship” is not easy to convey in words or in an orderly series of cause and effect arguments. It is rather something that must be felt or sensed, and can be experienced only through doing and self-experience. The educational relationship is established at a historical moment and in a concrete place. Besides the economic manifestation of the relationship as an act of “giving,” its active and tangible nature is embodied in the fact that it contains certain elements common to all forms of love and dialogical relationships. These elements, which in my view comprise the essence of educational work in the classroom, are: “care, responsibility, respect and knowledge” (Fromm, 1956: 26).

The first element is care: “Love,” writes Fromm (1956: 30), “is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love.” Care, accordingly, expresses the active component of love. Love has no meaning other than that embodied in the deeds and labor the lover invests in the love object—“Where this active concern is lacking,” writes Fromm (1956: 30), “there is no love.” This labor is manifested in concrete, time-consuming, and effortful acts: in patiently sitting after class with a student who failed to understand something, in helping a student organize and focus tasks toward an exam, in doing a nightly round on the annual school trip to make sure no one is cold and all are snug in their sleeping bags. Care has no value outside the framework of doing—students easily distinguish between care expressed in words and deeds, and respond accordingly. In turn, “care” embodies the dialectical nature of the relationship—by this logic, labor, and love are intertwined and feed each other; the more we labor for the object of our love, the more involved we become; and the more of an effort we make for the love object, the stronger our love grows. In this sense, our love is contingent upon our readiness to labor for it—“One loves that for which one labors,” writes Fromm (1956: 27), “and one labors for that which one loves.” Thus care turns out be an active expression of love, but also, dialectically, its genitor: teachers who avoid involvement in the lives of their students (because of the effort it entails), can never understand why their colleagues are so willingly immersed. ⁹

The second element is responsibility: “Responsibility,” writes Fromm (1956: 27–28), “is my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being.” Responsibility can be viewed as a practical expression of one’s recognition of the value of the other as a subject and as a sign of the existence of an Ich-Du relationship between the teacher and his/her students. The teacher’s responsibility toward his/her students is an expression of love and commitment; it indicates that the welfare of his/her students is important to him and that he cares for their physical and mental needs. Fromm (1956: 27–28) notes that responsibility is not “something imposed from the outside” but rather “an entirely voluntary act”—an expression of aliveness and free will. The teacher, in that sense, always has the option to not respond to the pupil’s call (particularly when it goes unheard because the young pupil is incapable of articulating it). The element of responsibility, as in Buber’s (1973: 253–255) conception, is an expression of the teacher’s choice to respond to the call, of his/her inner choice —“The loving person responds,” writes Fromm (1956: 28). The teacher’s responsibility is embodied then in a readiness to cope with the difficulties and challenges ensuing from her choice to be a “significant other.”

This fundamental responsibility is not an abstraction—it is specified and finds expression in every aspect of educational reality. Teacher responsibility is manifested, then, in a concrete response leading to a real transformation in student’s lives. “The child,” writes Lampert (2008: 112), “experiences through educators his being important; the fact that there is someone willing to act on his behalf and make a change for him in his material, concrete world; the fact that there is a person who is ready take action and not just talk to him about responsibility, or tell him he is actually making bad decisions.” In such a space, responsibility is elaborated as concrete experiences (so familiar to educators)—an educator who stays after school with a student who failed an exam, or pays a visit to an absentee student’s home. In such moments responsibility is revealed to be expressive of the teacher–student relationship. So, in being an authentic expression of one’s inner desire and free will, it also engenders mutual responsiveness and responsibility. Students sense when a teacher’s demands are based on responsibility founded on love and concern, and respond in suit to the authority that emanates from such. On the other hand, they reject teacher authority when they sense that their “responsibility” is no more than expression of concern for themselves; then “responsibility” is regarded as a false front, which only serves to insulate teachers from external pressures that threaten to unsettle their peace of mind (principal supervision, formal test measures or various types of management circulars).

The third element is respect: “Respect,” writes Fromm (1956: 28), “is the ability to see as person as he is, to be aware of his/her unique individuality.” By this logic, the teacher’s respect is aimed at the most fundamental and primary aspect of the student—his/her very existence in the world and his/her subjective uniqueness. This existential “response” requires that the teacher’s recognition of the student penetrates beyond external, stereotypical characteristics and prejudices, to the student’s very being. This respectful acknowledgement, attainable only within relations of love and dialogue, reveals the superficiality and tenuousness of images, prejudices, and adjectives, which are in turn exposed for what they are: barriers, fortifications, armor, which the person puts up out of fear and forgets. ¹⁰ Behind the outer image: the hair gel, gold chain, thick glasses, black clothes, there is always a boy, a girl, a person, an entire soul. Through love the teacher encounters this core, this radical root of humanity, as a constitutive basis for a relationship with the student: then he is committed to the development and growth of the other as he is, out of respect for his/her independent being. “Respect,” writes Fromm (1956: 28), “thus, implies the absence of exploitation.” The teacher wants the student to grow and evolve for himself and in his own way, and not as a means to his/her own ends or as a model of his/her own conceptions. Fromm (1956: 28) notes that the element of respect balances the potential for dominance and patronism hidden in the responsibility component; respect, in this sense, is not based on fear and awe but rather on mutual recognition and humility. “Humility,” according to this interpretation, is the teacher’s ability to suppress or humble his/her own self for the benefit of the student. When the teacher respects his/her students, he gives them, out of love, a place to grow and develop in space—he refrains from outbursts and dominating behaviors that make them feel small and even objectify them. At its best, respect is responsible for intimate and profound moments between teacher and class—for a sense of “home,” closeness and belonging, for turning the classroom into a place where one can develop and listen to each other with a sense of security and without fear.

The fourth element is knowledge: “To respect a person is impossible without knowing him,” writes Fromm (1956: 29). Knowing a student means penetrating to “the core of his being:” understanding what his heart conceals and the motives for his actions. Knowledge guides educators’ work, allows them to make accurate diagnoses, and to channel their concern and responsibility in empowering and developmental directions. When we “know” our students, we encounter and understand their being in a complex and profound way, and this familiarity empowers educators and enhances their status in the classroom. A student shakes his/her fists and curses “Go to hell!” but the teacher’s knowledge of the student reveals he is anxious, perturbed, and lonely. A girl grumbles openly in the middle of a lesson, “This is boring!”, but the teacher’s knowledge of her tells her of her frustration, of having tried and not succeeded, of the difficulty she is experiencing and the insecurity she feels. In these cases, knowledge reveals that underlying the rage, anger, and violence is a lack that needs to be filled. Knowledge thus allows educators to communicate with students in a profound way, which reinforces dialogue and strengthens the teacher–student relationship.

Knowledge in this sense also embodies educators’ professionalism and expertise, during key phases in students’ mental and cognitive development: the knowledge that each student absorbs the world at his/her own pace, according to his/her own age, temperament, and living conditions—and that this is not an indication of an incomplete or immature consciousness but rather of his/her own special virtues and merits. And again: this knowledge must find expression in concrete practice and experience: “knowledge” is not a form of analysis, contemplation, or abstract and general (philosophical/psychological/sociological) theoretical speculation on the mental state or life conditions of the child; nor is it embodied in some kind of one-off “therapeutic” intervention, as professional as it may be. Knowledge is rather praxis, and involves genuine presence, readiness, admiration, and interest expressed by the teacher toward his/her students over time and within a sequence of events and challenges—knowledge is contingent upon the love relationship.

Three short insights on the nature of the educational work

At the outset of the article I claimed that the special quality of educational work must be understood in the context of its economic irrationality and unconceptualizable foundations. Along the way I sought to clarify its existential characteristics and paradoxical, elusive, and emotional nature. I then located the unique economic nature of educational work in the “dialogical relationship” and in the four elements of the educational relationship: care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.

Among the insights that emerged was the clarification of my argument that the special nature of educational work is an expression, in the most profound sense, of the labor of love and the teacher–student relationship. This argument encompasses three basic insights regarding the nature of the educational work.

The first insight holds that the love relationship acquires value not out of philosophical speculation or inquiry but rather action and concrete intervention in reality. Only through the practical encounter and educators’ consistent daily responsiveness and commitment to their classes can the elements of the teaching relationship come together to form a unique and rewarding love relationship. Educational work, by this logic, is not made up of radical, sweeping, spectacular theoretical ideas but rather small, individual, and daily face-to-face encounters between teachers and students.

The second insight is that love’s content emerges out of the dialogical activity of the relationship. ¹¹ In this manner, the educator’s virtues and the special qualities of the teaching space are born, one out of the other, and always through the movement and change of actual practice: authority emerges out of commitment, responsibility out of care, partnership out of joint effort, satisfaction out of investment. In the same way emotions and actual self of worth, emerge out of one’s willingness to enter into “I-Thou” and Love relations with the Other (not the other way around). The educational space presents educators with a constant flow of complex human experiences and relationships—of emotional, ethical dilemmas, and opportunities to act and build positive self-value (first and foremost by being “meaningful” in the eyes of their students); out of this undying enthusiasm, which never rests on its laurels, the teacher’s consciousness is renewed and grows.

The third and final insight relates to the economic irrationality that characterizes educational work. By this logic, the “profit” to be gained out of such work can only be perceived in practice itself; only within the reality of the teaching relationship does the richness of the teacher’s rewards come to light: the same powerful and unmistakable sense of meaning which, like the feeling of “love,” is unquantifiable and very difficult to conceptualize.

It is important to note that in the actual, messy, and dynamic, daily school life the teacher–student relationship is always more complex than the binary reality set up in this paper. Authentic and loving educational praxis, is always realized in the ongoing movement between “I-it” and “I-Thou” relationships. Yet, I argue that the elusive nature of educational work demands of educators something like a “leap of faith”—a paradoxical tilting of the balance (in individualistic and materialistic terms) by virtue of which the pedagogical space is fundamentally transformed. The major part of the transformation is embodied in the understanding that educational work is not a means by which students are brought to a particular end, but is rather an end in itself; thus educational practice acquires its value, in the present, as an expression of dialogical relations of human attachment and connection. The issue of meaning in such a space is not superfluous to teaching practice, and a conversation with a student during a recess is no less important than a math lesson. Such a space is, first and foremost, a space of connection, presence, and encounter. In such a space, educators are the most significant figures in the institution, because through their work they embody the peculiar essence of educational practice, the daily reality of the love relationship.