Eros and Education: A Discussion of One Aspect of Discussion (1954)

By Joseph J. Schwab and Evelyn Klinckmann

Reading Notes--Adam Kissel

(quotes are from the Westbury edition) 

First of all, education is (contra many) about educating the whole person: reason, emotions, appetites: "the educated man is one who, while he enjoys a 'life of the mind,' also leads an active life in which zest and impulse restore, instead of exhaust themselves by having aims given them by thought" (125). Discussion is indispensable if the educator wants to give "an engagement in and a practice of the activities of thought and communication" (106). It is necessary to find what parts of the Eros can be channeled into productive and more lasting pursuits than those of youth.

Four factors involved with youthful Eros:

  1. Personal relation between teacher and student: a meeting of real people with each other.
  2. Enabling/disabling factors: administrative structures;
  3.      physical parameters of schooling;
  4.      qualities of the curriculum and materials

Personal relation:

Teacher: establish rapport with students (liking and respect) early by recognizing each one as individually worth knowing. But do not get sidetracked into discussions that are "beyond or beside the range of interest and comprehension of the group as a whole" (112-13). Some students may not return to topic, but the teacher should provide the student experiences of "discovery and repeated rediscovery of profit, of pleasure, and of the absence of injury in relationship with an adult . . . By so being, he constitutes himself a curative experience" (114). The teacher must find a middle between coldness and permissiveness, both in thought and in communication. [first 2-4 weeks]

Often there is an early stage of testing and provocation during which the student decides how must to like, trust, and respect the teacher.

Stage 2: redirect liking and respect from the student for his teacher into "pleasure in practicing what [the teacher] is and does as a liberally educated person" (116)--[but why does this direction and redirection have to happen anew for every class?].

Dangers: an ignorant, weak, or neurotic teacher does not accomplish Stage 2 but uses the liking and respect for the purpose of indoctrination, manipulation, self-aggrandizement, aggression, or disciple-making.

Administrative Structures

Disabling structures: in many cases, (a) taking roll (a police function), (b) giving exams, (c) making each teacher create a separate course.

Taking roll - attendance should be voluntary.

Giving exams - testing should be separated from teaching. Teacher should be seen as facilitator of what will be tested by another. Don't need a separate exam committee, but the course staff can institute its own general exam process [general in the sense of applying to all students across the course sections].

Separate courses - "puts the teacher in the position of inviting the student to participate in tasks which he and only he has set" (120). Better to have course committees:

(1) "guarantees to the student that what he is asked to do has been devised and decided by a meeting of minds" through rational debate (121)

(2) teacher is seen as a helper toward meeting the general requirements for the course

Physical Structures

For discussion, arrange chairs in a shape, around a table, and put extra students in the second row.

Curricular Materials

Should include both training materials and materials that are genuinely difficult for the teacher.

The intellectual subject matter includes "the arts and skills which confer cogency upon situations and actions whether these be scientific, social, or humanistic, general and abstract or particular and concrete" (125). Goal is "critical and organizing power and deliberative command over choice and action" (125).

Discussion: in various balances for different classrooms; the extremes should be avoided.

  1. "Each query or discussion must serve as an efficient means of arriving at a specific, intended understanding of some specified object of knowledge" (126); the substantive role
  2. "as an instance of movement toward understanding" (126)--(as focused on itself as a proper method of group inquiry); the exemplary role
  3. "as a stimulus to the student to try the activity in question, the activity which can eventuate in the immediate understanding sought" (126); the stimulative role --which may only succeed, on any given day, with a few students. Exclusive attention to this aspect of discussion becomes training in sophistry. Appreciation of diverse methods and solutions, together with evaluation of them, can broaden a group discussion beyond the mere bull session of "closed" group knowledge.

Goal: Irene = peace = shalom -- harmonious increase of knowledge, creation, and Eros through their exercise.