Educational work as a “labor of love”

Abstract

The following paper examines the unique, human, and pedagogical nature of the encounter between educators and their students. It discusses the potential for alienation inherent in the educator teaching encounter (a potential embodied in what I term “the first fifteen seconds of anxiety”). The paper goes on to examine the possibility of constituting an alternative relationship based on pedagogy of mutual and non-alienated recognition rooted in an interpersonal and dialogical relationship. This conceptualization is performed through a consideration of Martin Buber’s notion of the “dialogical relationship” and the pedagogical implications of the “love relationship” in Erich Fromm’s philosophy. The article claims that the special quality of educational work must be understood in the context of its economic irrationality and unconceptualizable foundations. In order to clarify its existential characteristics and paradoxical, elusive, and emotional nature, it locates the unique economic nature of educational work in the “dialogical relationship” and in the four elements of the educational relationship: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.