'How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?' Personal Concern and Sexual Desire in the Educational Relationship. Issue 3 (23rd October 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: WILLIAMS, KEVIN
• Other Names: Aldridge David guestEditor.; Lewin David guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of philosophy of education. Volume 53:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 560
• Page End: 573
• Publication Date: 2019-10-23
• Subjects: Education -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Education -- Great Britain -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; 370.1
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12378
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0309-8249

Abstract

Abstract: Drawing on both philosophical and imaginative sources, this article explores the profile of concern and caring in the teacher–learner relationship. Following a defence of the role of narrative in educational theory, the nature of the teacher–learner relationship and the role of concern in the relationship are addressed. The main part of the essay draws on the autobiographical fiction The Pupil: A Memory of Love by Irish author Monk Gibbon to demonstrate the process whereby shared passion for literature can become—on the part of the teacher—an obsessive sexual desire for the learner. Eschewing virtue‐signalling and moral grandstanding, the third and concluding part of the essay endeavours to explain the inappropriateness of the erotic in the teacher–learner relationship.