A relational philosophy of education

Martin Buber 1878-1965

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 Outline
• Buber’s Fundamental principle
• Other possible fundamental principles
• A graphic
• Buber’s two approaches
• Buber’s key words and what they mean
• 2 critics of progressivism: Buber and
Arendt

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• ‘The development of the creative powers
of the child’
– Child: something new has come into the world
– Creative? ‘Creation originally means only the
divine summons to the life hidden in non-
being’ (Between Man and Man, p. 110)
– This is the originative instinct
– Besides the originative instinct, there is ‘the
instinct for communion’ (p. 114)
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 Reflective/non-reflective stances

• Self in a mirror

I other

Self-reflection?
Projections –too positive
--too negative

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 Reflective/non-reflective stances

• I look into a pupil’s eyes

I pupilla
A little ‘doll’ in the
other’s eye

The pupil tells you

who you are

You read the ‘pupil’

esteem
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Buber’s two stances. Which stance for
education?

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 I-Thou approach

• Hebrew understanding of knowledge:

– To know is to embrace lovingly,
lovingly not to exploit, use up,
ravish, exhaust
– Link between knowing and loving (rather than
knowing and doing)
• Instinct of communion:
– Only if someone grasps a person’s hand does she
know that she has a gift
– The free expression of individual selfhood is not a
proper educational aim (originative instinct)
– The purpose of teaching is to open oneself to relation

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 Buber 1878-1965
• Critic of the following models:
• Gardener: A critic of gardener model of a
teacher (i.e., progressivism, based on the
potentialities of the child)
• Sculptor: A critic of the sculptor model
(adult society shapes the young
according to its best norms and values)
• Funnel: Teacher funnels information into
the heads of children
• Pump: teacher brings out the
potentialities of the child

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 Buber’s Key Words
• Relation
– The teacher is skilled in the art of communicating
(meeting)
– All education is a meeting (not like Robinson Crusoe
model)
• Freedom
– Not freedom from compulsion but freedom for
communion (p.117)
– Freedom to be creative (as a creature of God) in the
context of a meeting, an encounter
– Freedom to trust
• Interest
– To learn in the space between man and man (Inter-
esse: das Zwischen)
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 Relation
• 3 forms of inclusion
– Competitive stance: Mutual understanding
between equals who may nevertheless be
rivals (BMM, p. 126)
– Assymmetrical stance: One-sided experience
of inclusion: the educator must operate “from
over there”
• “The educator stands at both ends of the common
situation, the pupil only at one end” BMM, p. 128
– Symmetrical: Two-sided experience of
inclusion: a dialogical relation --- friendship
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 Teacher qualities
• Have the confidence
to encounter
something that is new
and different
• Accept pupils before
attempting to
influence them
• Present the message
that there is a human
truth

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 Summary
• When people meet there is a common event
• Teacher lives through this event from two
standpoints
• Spiritually, the pupil needs to operate out of
his confidence that there is a human truth,
that the teacher accepts him/her before
trying to influence him/her
• Meeting is not interference or influence but
freedom

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• I do not accept any absolute formulas for living.
No preconceived code can see ahead to
everything that can happen in a man's life. As
we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They
must change. So I think we should live with this
constant discovery. We should be open to this
adventure in heightened awareness of living. We
should stake our whole existence on our
willingness to explore and experience. Martin
Buber
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 Further Reading
• BUBER, M. (1971) Between Man and
Man, London, Fontana.
• COHEN, A. (1983) The Educational
Philosophy of Martin Buber, New York?,
Associated Universities Press.
• MURPHY, D. (1988) Martin Buber's
Philosophy of Education, Dublin, Irish
Academic Press.
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How humans can appear

 Agora (public space)

 Here humanity as such can appear
 Humanity as such appears under two forms
Difference (plurality)
Freshness (natality)
 Human beings appear as such through their actions
and speech
 In a totalitarian regime (tyranny), this kind of
appearance does not occur
 The difference and freshness of people do not count
 There is no in between place of respect and listening
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Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition
(1958)
• 1.what kind of polity is in the
classroom? A tyranny, but a tyranny
without leaders, where no one has a
valid political voice. majority opinion
is never tested (Between Past and
Future, p. 181)
• Both
– To protect the child from the world
– To protect the world from the child

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 Second and Third Objections
• 2. treats teaching as a generic skill
(p.182)
• 3. distorts learning into doing. “You
know only what you have done yourself”
• INSTEAD CONSIDER
Human appearance IN TERMS OF
– Plurality
– Natality
– Speech
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