Political Pedagogy towards Democratic Education: Educating Students to Care about Local and Global Injustice

Abstract

Introduction The aim of this article is to explore how educators can assist students in developing attitudes that are engaged and sympathetic to local and global inequalities and injustices. Primarily, the work of Nel Noddings (1984, 1992, 2002, 2006, 2007) on care and caring will be used to examine how this goal might best be accomplished. The work of Slavoj Zizek (1989, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2008a) will also be addressed as it relates to Noddings' care project. My goal in reflecting on Noddings' work in this context is to better understand how college instructors can positively teach students (and pre-service teachers) to care about those individuals (and groups of people) that are separated from the students by a myriad of social, geographic, economic, and political factors. By working through the theoretical lens that Noddings provides, it is my hope to gain a greater sense of how to guide students to openness to and awareness of issues of local and global importance. Starting at Zizek The epigraph to this article may seem out of place. However, I would assert that Slavoj Zizek's comment is an outstanding, if unorthodox, place to jump into the discourse of care. My rationale for using one of Zizek's most popular Youtube rants to begin the discussion of Noddings' work on care and teaching students to care about issues of social and political import is based on the appearance that it seems so at odds with conventional common sense and possibly also with Noddings' views. Yet, this initial impression of incongruity, in my opinion, does not bear out. In fact, I think there is something remarkably similar in their positions. The point Zizek is making is one of his most profound and is right in front of all of us everyday--we prioritize who and what is important to us. Some things and some people are more important to us than others (usually family and friends) and simply saying we the world does not cut it. This is similar to Noddings' contention that it is difficult to care for the world. It seems that Zizek and Noddings have a common understanding and distaste for the paltry and emotionally impoverished view that love and care cannot be universalized in such a global manner without reducing the meaning of those terms beyond the constituent elements of their definitions. Further, it seems that Zizek and Noddings are both rejecting the platitude of universal love as being naive and as a disappointing inversion of the true principle that supposedly makes up such statements. Zizek's provocative statement that is evil may be shocking, but it is difficult to escape his dramatic assertion--we care more for some things and people than others. The implications of his statement lead us back to why Noddings' work is so vitally important to how we teach students to care about individuals and groups that are different from us and separated from us by proximity, gender, class, ethnic background, language, and intellectual tradition. The remainder of the article clarifies the importance of Noddings' work to post-secondary education. In the next sections, I will review Noddings' work on care and caring and relate it to how educators may possibly guide students towards more benevolent attitudes on a global scale. Noddings on Care and Caring About Nel Noddings' Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984) is an outstanding achievement in relational moral theory. At the heart of Noddings' theory is a rootedness in lived experience that critiques the orthodox approach of abstracted, noetic moral schemes and that instead offers to vividly bring moral theory back into the real world. Noddings makes clear early on in this text why she thinks this feminine approach that relies on certain concreteness fills a historical void: Women, in particular, seem to approach moral problems by placing themselves as nearly as possible in concrete situations and assuming personal responsibility for the choices to be made. …