Love, care and belonging

15th February 2021

The theme for today’s seminar was love, care and belonging. I explored the following resources to prepare for this seminar; Bell Hook’s, All About Love, Introduction chapter and The Art of Loving in the Classroom: A Defence of Affective Pedagogy by Alan Patience.

I made the following notes to prep for the Seminar.

Bell Hook’s book All About Love. 

• She focuses on romantic love and is concerned with how we learn about love.
• Tells her personal story about being heartbroken, and her own relationship to love.
• Discusses love in modern society and says it is generally considered suspicious or dismissed by new generations, (Tina Turner ‘What’s Love got to do with it?’, a rap singer who says “ (love) what’s that? I’ve never had any love in my life’
• Different gender beliefs and experiences of love, says that women are taken less seriously in talking and writing about love. Women yearning/men receiving. She says when she tried to talk about love to friends they say ‘go get therapy.’ I say get some better friends Bell.
• The message I took was that we are in danger of neglecting our emotional sides, being instinctive or talking to our hearts. That we value intellect, over emotion. And this is bad for society. 

The Art of Loving In the Classroom: A Defence of Affective Pedagogy

• Patience introduces this essay as a defence of a form of teaching that he says has been eroded by ‘the culture of the new capitalisim’ Sennet 2006. He calls this teaching affective pedagogy.
• He outlines two kinds of pedagogy, Affective Pedagogy and Utilitarian Pedagogy
• Affective Pedagogy is described as involving the value of a discipline and a value imparting this to students. Challenging students while respecting developing intellects, and engaging students in what he calls ‘dramatic friendships’, 
• It’s learning as an end in itself incorporating a means to an end. Here there is value and joy in the process of learning and subject matter.
• Love comes in here. The Dramatic friendship involves love
• This love is likened to familial love, a nurturing, selfless love. Open and positive.  
• ‘Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving.’ Fromm 1961
• Patience says in modern society Affective Pedagogy is being eroded , Utilitarian pedagogy is given precedent.
• Utilitarian Pedagogy is defined as a more authoritarian approach, where the goals are more important, it involves rote learning and drilling. Hence the relationships and experience  in the classroom would be 1 dimensional and hierarchical.
• In the modern world utilitarian pedagogy is pushing aside the affective pedagogy.

Comparisens

• Both talk about a better society as a result of incorporating love into the equation, both warning of a world without love.
• A question of giving and receiving come up in both, Patience quotes Fromm 1961 ‘Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving.’ Hook says ‘Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often fee we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.’
• In the last para in Hook she talks about the transformative power of love, I think this is what is meant with regard to affective pedagogy, how love can create the best nurturing environment for teacher and learner.

Reflection

I really enjoyed thinking about these two pieces of writing and this topic. I was especially interested in Patience’s essay. The affective pedagogy is described as knowledge and learning as a mutual endeavour between teacher and student. The relationship established is essential in creating the best learning outcomes. Though these outcomes may be less definable and are tied up with gaining insight from a teacher whose experience involves intuition as well as knowledge. It is  “ As much about feelings and emotions as it is about learning outcomes”

The relationship between teacher and student is compared with familial relationships, where the kind of love is selfless, open and nurturing.  Being both a mum and a teacher I can relate to a crossover here, I know that there are many points in both where I’m opening myself up, creating a very open, positive frame of mind.

Both Hook and Patience seem to say that we as are losing connection with ourselves, the importance of the emotional in regard to our development and learning impacts society, politics and education. They both made me think of the exciting possibilities for us, if the balance in our value system could shift from the current market driven model to something softer, where our mental health and wellbeing is more important, where we are encouraged to follow our intuitions, and listen to our hearts.

Taught to believe that the mind, not the heart, is the seat of learning, many of us believe that to speak of love with any emotional intensity means we will be perceived as weak and irrational”

I got the feeling Hook is getting us to imagine the power of being able to talk about love more openly and intellectually, and learn about love and what impact that may have. It reminded me of an the artists Lora Mathis’ work, radical softness talking about emotions as taking a stance of power and not weakness.

Patience quotes the British idealist Philosopher Oakeshott: ‘the imparting of practical knowledge entails complex emotional as well as intellectual interactions between teacher and student.’

This rings true to me. When things are going really well in the classroom, it seems down to an interaction between me and students that involves a mix of me being myself and showing my personality as well as the content of my plan. I’ve noticed that part of my struggle with transitioning to online learning is because I rely on soft skills so much. Being physically present with a student seems so necessary to be able to pick up all the nuances of body language and using intuition to read what is going on for a student emotionally and intellectually. It makes perfect sense that both intellect and emotion play a role a learning. I’ve realised now how reliant on my intuition and reading emotion I was to create a place where students are inspired and engaged.

I have been learning how to create this online, I’ve found it interesting that it is also possible to achieve a this connection in the online context, for example with the use of emojis and playing music, having a playlist for students to choose their own music.

I thought it funny and ironic in light of covid that Patience described the extreme version of utilitarian pedagogy as a dystopian vision of call centres where teachers deliver rote, drill-like lessons to students remotely. Though it’s been tough converting everything online, I see that there is still potential to keep the love alive in teaching online.