All About Love
Bell Hooks
It still feels radical for someone to say emotions and life experience have a place in the academic world. Could I use my own more extensively?
Love’s ‘transformative power’
This idea – of love as a force in learning, in living and in society and that it is Higher Education’s business as much as anything else is something I had not considered before.
Also, if it is a ‘transformative force’ then it is part of work towards social justice. In our course narrative, in terms of social justice, we talk about producing practitioners who can act as ‘agents of change’. Could that also mean ‘agents of love’? And if so, what does that mean?
‘Love is as important as work, as crucial to our service as a nation as the drive to succeed.’
(Page 24)
Remembering back to the TEF and its measures that focused on ‘graduate employment and further study within 6 months’. This statement and idea is suggests for me the type of value education could have beyond work and money to individuals and to society.
‘We want to live in a culture where love can flourish. We yearn to end the lovelessness that is so pervasive in our society.’
(Page 25)
So if artist and designers create culture then they must create it using attitudes and an approaches that can act like soil to grow in. And in terms of ‘loneliness’ that acknowledge and/or represent multiple voices and perspectives.
Some of the areas this might impact are:
- Behaviour – staff/student relationship
- Culture – peer/peer relationships and staff – Community
- Curriculum – Critical and ethical practice, but also introducing feeling and love into all areas.
Re behaviour, this should be considered in all interactions.
Re culture, this could be encouraged in cross year, cross programme activity. In more formal terms, activity like the Illustration Community and Inclusion Working Group. Informally, the ‘socials’ which happen through the year.
Re curriculum, in learning activity addressing critical and ethical practice like this series I developed and delivered with a colleague for Unit 3, recordings here:
SESSION 1: Critical Lecture and Workshop – Narrator Collaborate ULTRA
Tuesday, 23 February 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
SESSION 2: Critical Lecture and Workshop – Activist Collaborate ULTRA
Tuesday, 2 March 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
SESSION 3: Critical Lecture and Workshop – Educator Collaborate ULTRA
Tuesday, 9 March 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
SESSION 4: Critical Lecture and Workshop – Investigator Collaborate ULTRA
Tuesday, 16 March 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=52630
But also I think feelings and love could have a greater place when teaching in practical areas like colour, drawing etc.
The Art of Loving in the Classroom: A Defence of Affective Pedagogy
Allan Patience
‘Affective pedagogy is as much about feelings and emotions as it is about learning outcomes. Indeed the feelings and emotions are inseparable from the learning outcomes’ proposed by Michael Oakeshott
(Page 57)
This resonates with me. It is interesting that this type of idea is something practitioners discuss, believe in and act on amongst themselves rather than something that can be acknowledged officially by courses or institutions. Why is that?
It could be a mixture of reasons. Partly, the tradition of feelings not being the business of academia and partly the political and economic context described elsewhere in this article ‘what Sennet (2006) calls ‘the culture of the new capitalism.’ (Page 55)
‘Dramatic friendship means relating wholeheartedly to another person ‘who engages the imagination, who excites contemplation, who provokes interest, sympathy, delight and loyalty simply on account of the relationship entered into’ (Oakeshott, 1991, 537)’
‘Agape (comradely or selfless love), embracing the capacity to love, altruistically and profoundly.’
‘Agape alludes to love that is characterised by an acute intensity of mutual valuing. It is a love that is liberating and open, rounded and anticipatory, not closed into the here-and-now. It is more about loving rather than about being loved. It is the very antithesis of narcissism.
(Page 57)
The crux of the matter of all Affective Pedagogy for me is this characterisation of Agape. You focus on the loving and get affirmation from that, rather than the receiving affirmation back.
I think this is so important because I think this emphasis protects and sustains you in situations where Affective Pedagogy is really put to the test, when you’re dealing with student’s negative emotions or behaviour and it differs from your own emotional perspective and input. These events can range from small to big but examples might include:
- Poor student attendance at a session you spent a lot of time organising
- Student unhappiness over their Covid experience when you have triple and quadruple the workload
- Complaint about staff team from a troubled student, when you expended a great deal of effort to get them the correct support
If you love your students, then situations like this can feel to a lesser or greater degree hurtful. You can feel like you should abandon the care and love you feel and adopt the view of jaded colleagues you have known who have an ‘us and them’ attitude about students. You can ask yourself – Why have I made myself vulnerable in this way? But remembering the direction and character of your relationship allows you to do what is necessary to sustain the love and support:
- Understand and acknowledge that students feelings and behaviour are completely understandable and valid from their point of view and with their evidence and experience
- Understand and acknowledge that your feelings are valid and find a space where you can deal with those feelings separate from the students (e.g. colleagues or a journal)
Doing these things and having a really strong sense of the nature of your relationship to students helps you be the bigger and endlessly patient person you need to be.
A sense of some of these nuances of the way feelings play out in the educational environment are not addressed in this article. This makes sense since this is a small space to deal with such a big topic. Also, the article seems to be more focused on the larger social and political impact of adopting such pedagogy. Ronald Barnett highlights some potential inaccuracies in the adoption of terms such as ‘friendship’ and ‘love’ saying
‘Friendship carries with it undue overtones of reciprocity: love carries with it undue overtones of passion devoid of standards.’
He digs deeper into these terms and more such as ‘gift’, ‘passion’ and ‘delight’.
See blog post A Will to Learn for more.
‘Democratic citizenship takes root where individuals and groups are able to participate, intelligently and responsibly, in making the decisions that affect their lives. It requires informed people with well-developed capacities to cooperate sympathetically, tolerantly and with understanding across a wide range of cultural, religious, language and gender barriers.
Good teaching and learning methodologies contribute profoundly to the making of citizenship in this sense. To achieve this, they need to embrace the human experience in all its complexities and possibilities at intellectual and emotional levels.’
I had thought that fusing the intellectual and emotional was important to learning but I hadn’t considered the scope, extent or impact of that on society as a whole.