CHARACTER EDUCATION
In care-based approaches to the philosophy of education , the role of the educator is to model and facilitate this process through caring engagements with students and through careful guidance of the students ’ engagements with each other . Put very simply , the caring relation , for Noddings , has three aspects : ‘ A cares for B- that is A ’ s consciousness is characterised by attention and motivational displacement .’ Then , ‘ A performs some act in accordance with ( 1 ), and ( 3 ). B recognizes that A cares for B .’ ( Noddings 2002 : p19 ). It is significant in this description of care that a necessary condition for a caring relationship is that B ‘ recognizes ’ that A cares for them . This suggests that it is crucial that , in attending to our students , we show that we are responding to them , their expression of themselves . For Noddings , if we are to consider ourselves caring teachers , it should matter what words we use to address them . It would also matter how we allow students to address each other . To approach an encounter with a student purely on the grounds of how we ourselves see them , would be to interact with them merely on the grounds of our own beliefs about the world . This would be an expression of ‘ motive ’ for Noddings , it would amount to a failure to care in accordance with the three stages of care described above . Similarly , in the classroom , construing critical issues to do with identity and religion , economic inequality , right and wrong , as fundamentally a matter of ‘ argument ’, and , in so doing , invoking the motive to ‘ convince ’, sets up the encounters that take place there to be combative and uncaring . Noddings work therefore calls us to recognise that in some cases , as Johnson and Lakoff have observed , the language of argument , ‘ defending oneself ’, ‘ demolishing someone ’ s point ’, ‘ shooting down arguments ’ is also the language of war ( Johnson & Lakoff 2003 : p . 12 ). She is laudably sympathetic to Jacques Derrida ’ s suggestion that the pursuit of knock-down arguments can drown out those who do not feel able or may not wish to explain themselves in rational terms , excluding ‘ voices , words , and pleas from those who do not use the standard forms of argumentation .’ ( Noddings 2016 : p . 78 ).
The critical thinking classroom , for Noddings , would serve as an ideal space to practise this mode of interaction . Since ‘ relation ’ is ontologically basic to human life , and since this the caring relation is formed through attention and responsiveness , care ethicists like Noddings understand , as Socrates did , that in order to be true to what it means to be human , education must be grounded in dialogue ( Rhees 2016 ) ( Buber 2002 ) ( Mullhall 2007 ). For Noddings , the critical thinking classroom can therefore serve as the ideal space for moral growth in which , rather than just practising ‘ argument ’ or ‘ rational thinking ’ students can be encouraged to deepen understanding of their lives and lives of others through ‘ reflective ’, non-argumentative , critical discussion ( Noddings 2016 ). Though learning rational thinking skills would still be important , students could be encouraged to approach troubling existential and ethical questions conversationally and inquisitively in a caring and collaborative way . For Noddings , such an approach would be true to the thought that we are essentially feeling beings before we are thinking beings . In order to facilitate the development of the capacity to care and be cared for , the ‘ educational task ’ of the critical thinking classroom could therefore at least partly be to ‘ educate the passions ’, especially ‘ moral sentiments ’ like ‘ sympathy ’. ( Noddings 1992 : p . 8 ).
In practice , this would necessitate instilling skills of generosity of attention in our critical thinking classrooms by asking questions such as ‘ how hard are we trying to understand what our interlocutor is attempting to tell us ?’, ‘ how effectively can we suspend our prior conceptions about others when we listen to them ?’ It would also necessitate instilling a capacity for compassionate responsiveness in our students by encouraging them to ask questions such as ‘ how well can we summarise another ’ s argument ?’, ‘ why might someone think this way ?’, ‘ what are the limitations that our own personal beliefs might place on others ?’ None of this means that students will not be able to engage critically with important ideas . The major theories about Good , Evil , Right , Wrong , God , and Human Nature , that have defined our cultures can easily be scrutinised in this reflective way . But beneath our critical discussion would be the aim to , as Noddings puts it , ‘ let the other be ’, to encounter others on their own terms , to practise giving attention to their concerns generously and without motive . In so doing , the hope of the caring critical thinking teacher would be that , in recognising how deeply their lives can be shaped by their encounters with others and how profoundly the lives of others can be shaped by them , students can come to recognize that the ability to care and be cared for is essential to what it means to live a meaningful and happy life .
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