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Abstract
Taking inspiration from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I propose to work through some of the features of “false generosity” that arise in education and specifically in moments of acute crisis. This inquiry, which begins with (and was sparked by) events following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, continues with a discussion of Philippe Falardeau's (2011) film Monsieur Lazhar, and concludes with a reflection on Jacques Derrida's ethic of hospitality (elegantly applied by Jen Gilbert in her thinking about sexuality in schools.) Derrida provides a supplement to Freire's notion of “true generosity” by offering a radical (if impossible) model of unconditional giving and welcome. Of primary concern throughout this essay is how a posture of sympathetic paternalism expressed through superficial and symbolic gestures may not only preempt the delicate and hard work of symbolizing loss, but also obstruct the possibility of a more genuine and humanizing solidarity (what Freire would call “true generosity” and what Derrida would call an ethics of “unconditional hospitality”). The goal of providing solid and soothing guidance in situations of uncertainty may seem laudable. But are there moments when the oath of “doing no harm” is in itself harmful? Can we forge new answers to the questions: What are the goods of education? What is teaching good for?
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The word “Sangha” means Buddhist spiritual community. In this case, we were a secular group comprised of artists, activists, yogis and meditators.
2. When I left my hotel, the international phone lines to Japan were still jammed.
3. Robert Bringhurst (b. 1946) is one of Canada's most respected poets. He is also a typographer, translator, cultural historian and linguist. “His poetry is rare but never rarefied,” writes literary critic Kate Kellaway. “Bringhurst aims high: he attempts to grasp the essence of what it is to be alive.”
4. By liminal, I mean the predefinitional zone of “things yet-to-be-named.” Soon we would be in the zone of naming: The Great East Japan Disaster. 3/11. Or, simply, Fukushima.
5. As Freire (Citation1996) notes: “Dialogue does not impose, does not manipulate, does not domesticate, does not ‘sloganize.’ This does not mean, however, that the theory of dialogical action leads nowhere; nor does it mean that the dialogical human does not have a clear idea of what she wants, or of the objectives to which she is committed” (p. 149).
6. I believe he was drawing on a tradition of engaged Buddhism that might link to what Freire (Citation1996) calls “the silence of profound meditation, in which men only apparently leave the world, withdrawing from it in order to consider it in its totality, and thus remaining with it. But this type of retreat is only authentic when the meditator is ‘bathed’ in reality; not when the retreat signifies contempt for the world and flight from it” (ft.3, p. 69).
7. Naomi Klein argues in The Shock Doctrine (Citation2007) that it is through crises of some sort – a natural disaster, a war, a coup d'état, a terrorist attack, the collapse of an economy and subsequent joblessness – that paternalistic relationships (already present to a lesser extent in neoliberal democracies) are reinscribed. “The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was a different kind of shock from the ones imagined in the pages of the Kubark manual, but its effects were remarkably similar: profound disorientation, extreme fear and anxiety, and collective regression. Like the Kubark interrogator posing as a ‘father figure’, the Bush administration promptly used that fear to play the role of the all-protective parent, ready to defend ‘the homeland’ and its vulnerable people by any means necessary” (p. 42).
8. Full quote: “Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary; it is a radical posture” (Freire, Citation1996, p. 30).
9. Compare this to Freire's (Citation1996) critique of paternalistic “activism” or “action for action's sake” which “negates true praxis and makes dialogue impossible” (p. 69).
10. To quote Deborah Britzman (Citation2009): “Thinking is an experiential form of action that allows us to construct scenarios that never before existed.”
11. As Edith Wharton (Citation2010) wrote in her classic novel The House of Mirth: “the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed” (p. 174).
12. It is worth noting here that there have been several reviews and essays positively comparing Monsieur Lazhar to other teacher representations in film. Emphasized in these discussions is how the portrayal of Lazhar as intuitively kind and humanly fallible departs from the common depiction of teachers as boring, pedantic, spectacularly inspirational or whimsically quixotic.
13. I am indebted to Professor Lisa Farley for helping me articulate this idea.
14. In On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Derrida (Citation2001) defines “unconditional hospitality” as the Law of hospitality “offered a priori to every other, to all newcomers, whoever they may be” (p. 22).
15. In the spirit of embracing risk and unpredictability, a “pedagogy of an empty hand” affirms critics such as Gert Biesta who counter the educational trend towards standardization, pragmatism and quantification, and who argue instead for more ethical and creative measures of learning (Biesta, Citation2013).
16. One of the most poignant and revealing moments in Monsieur Lazhar occurs when a student named Marie-Frédérique stands up in the middle of a spontaneous (and taboo) class discussion about the suicide of a teacher and blurts: “Everyone thinks we're traumatized by Martine's suicide, but it's the adults who are really.”
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Kyo Maclear
Kyo Maclear is a novelist, children's author and PhD candidate in Education at York University. She holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her current research examines the figure of the child redeemer in narratives of environmental collapse.