Martin Buber’s philosophy of education and its implications for adult non‐formal education

Abstract

The Jewish philosopher and educator Martin Buber (1878–1965) is considered one of the twentieth century’s greatest contributors to the philosophy of religion and is also recognized as the pre‐eminent scholar of Hasidism. He has also attracted considerable attention as a philosopher of education. However, most commentaries on this aspect of his work have focussed on the implications of his philosophy for formal education and for the education of the child. Given that much of Buber’s philosophy is based on dialogue, on community and on mutuality, it is puzzling that relatively little has been written on the implications of Buber’s thought for the theory and practice of non‐formal adult education. The article provides a discussion of the philosophy underpinning this aspect of Martin Buber’s life and work, and its implications for adult non‐formal education.

Notes

1. It is important to draw attention to the German word Du of the original title of Buber’s work, Ich und Du. Walter Kaufman in his translation of the work points out that Du is the German personal pronoun one uses to address friends or family, people with whom one has a close relationship, Du is the informal personal pronoun; this is in contrast with Sie, which is the personal pronoun used to address people one is not familiar with or that one does not have a close relationship with, or that is used as a sign of respect (for example, with elders). This distinction is present in many languages (French: Tu and Vous; Portuguese; Tu and Voce). The English archaic personal pronoun Thou does not encapsulate the idea of informality present in Du and it is perhaps better translated as ‘you’ in English (something which Kaufman actually does in his translation—he only kept the original Thou of the title). This is perhaps an improvement in the right direction, though it is still problematic in our opinion as the English language has lost the distinction between formal and informal pronouns. That said, we have opted to keep Thou throughout this article as this is the term used in the wider literature (Buber, M. (1972) I and Thou (trans. W. Kaufman) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).

2. The I–Thou relation is not something exclusive to inter‐human relationships for Buber, and thus it is not something that only happens between two human beings. The I–Thou relation can take place between human beings and nature, and between human beings and God, also. Since here we focus on education we have allowed ourselves to ignore these other aspects of the I–Thou relation which are not relevant to this article.

3. See for instance the recent report on literacy in Kenya by the UNESCO, ‘Real Options for Literacy Policy and Practice in Kenya’. The distinction between Freire’s empowering method and basic literacy skills are well documented in the paper (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001459/145956e.pdf).