Documents studied:
Bell Hooks. 2000. All About Love. HarperCollins, New York.
Laura D’Olimpio. 2019 Ethics of Care (Webpage & video)
As the quote from my MA Film student shows (post above), love is a vital part of teaching.
As such, it is important to research what is love, its impact in our lives and its past and present dynamic. To do so, we were asked to read Bell Hooks’ book: All About Love.
In her book Bell Hooks relates the difficulty in finding a definition of love that would satisfied her until she found Scott Peck’s definition. To him, love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s or another’s spiritual growth” (Bell Hooks. 2000. All About Love. P4). Indeed, love is a transformative force for all who experienced it as it allows an in-depth, open-hearted and caring relation as well as a sense of belonging with a person or a group of people. And thanks to this inclusive and unbiased definition it is clear to see that love is a paramount affective aspect of the learner-teacher relationship.
Reading further it was interesting to notice that although love is universal, it is never the less still perceived and defined in a patriarchal way which is the reason why Bell Hooks had so much difficulties in finding an unbiased definition of love. Indeed, in a patriarchal society, young males are told from a very young age to withhold emotions and feelings and therefore to lie and conceal aspects of their being in order to keep control and power over women. And as the psychotherapist Harriet Lerner mentions in The Dance of Deception “women are encouraged by sexist socialization to pretend and manipulate, to lie as a way to please” (Bell Hooks. 2000. All About Love. P33). Both genders are therefore nurtured into a false understanding and perception of love. Male expect to receive love and women long for the love they do not receive. Unfortunately, as Bell Hooks mentions “few writers, male or female, talk about the impact of patriarchy, the way in which male domination of women and children stands in the way of love.” (Bell Hooks. 2000. All About Love. PXXIV).
It will take exposing and breaking patriarchy’s morale and power, and promoting an equitable and trustful relation between gender, for love to flourish in our lives the way we all need it to.
One of the authors who expose patriarchal morale is Laura D’Olimpio in her book The Ethics of Care.
In the article studied, D’Olimpio explores two male centric moral theories: deontology and utilitarianism. Although both theories are based on a different interpretation of why an action is right or wrong, they both require that the person who decides to do the action alienate himself or herself from their emotions and feelings. In opposition, ethic of care also called feminist ethic disagree with the opposition between reason and emotion and prone decision-making to be based on relationships with people (known or unknown), their environment and background stories. This way the decision maker is in touch with his/her emotions, connected to others and the moral decision is therefore made by someone who cares.
In order to understand better the ethics of care it is important to study its origin. The video does so by comparing two different authors and psychologists: Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice. (Harvard University Press, 1982) and Lawrence Kohlberg’s work. Gilligan suggests that making a moral judgment based on concrete human relations, responsibility and care is not necessarily a lower stage of moral judgment than to consider principles such as reason, rights and rules. Similarly, Nel Nodding argues that past ethical theories where too male orientated by emphasising on law, justice and reason (seeing as intrinsic male values) and should have instead focus more on female values such as responsibility of care, connection to others, justice and responsiveness. She also asserts that using relationship between people as the basis for moral ethics has more value than following inconsistent set of moral.
Therefore, Ethic of Care is based on listening attentively, free from bias (conscious or unconscious) and stereotypes, using intersectionality as a tool for the moral decision making and emotions such as caring and compassion as moral ethics
D’Olimpio finalises the article by exploring the stereotype that links woman to caring role such as education and nursing. One cannot help wondering though, that if by calling ethics of care, feminist ethic D’Olimpio doesn’t help perpetuating the stereotype of care being the attributes of woman.
Vocabulary:
Deontology: normative ethical theory advocating that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action.
Utilitarianism: ethical theory stipulating that an action (or type of action) is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action but also for everyone else affected by it.
Intersectionality: an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these aspects are gender, caste, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and height. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
Reference to explore:
Elizabeth Barriet Browning’s poetry
Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety (Simon & Schuster, 1997)
Carol Gilligan In a Different Voice (Harvard University Press, 1982)
Reflexion:
Nurture Vs Nature:
Reflecting on Nurture Vs Nature made me think of Naomi Alderman’s book “The Power” that I have read recently (Naomi Alderman. 2016. The Power. Penguin. Winner of The Women’s Prize For Fiction).
The premise behind Naomi Alderman’s The Power is both simple and a paradigm-shift. Indeed, the storyline follows some teenage girls around the globe and in a world similar to our own, who discover that they can harness enormous electrical power with a flick of their fingers. This power is generated by a specially adapted muscle named the “skein”, and by using it women can inflict enormous pain, even death, upon anyone they touch. Before long, the patriarchal status quo is subverted beyond recognition and men are left behind by an evolutionary process that they cannot comprehend nor replicate or control, while women forge a new world in which a shift in gender dynamics facilitates not only physical dominance, but also immense social and political power. The fundamental premise that power is power, and is thus a corrupting influence regardless of which gender wields it, gives the book a dark tone to which some readers and critics have objected.
The skein is a metaphor for as well as an inversion of male privilege. And like male privilege, it quickly becomes the norm. Half way through the story, the new power dynamic is already established and women don’t need to heighten their power or even use it anymore; the power itself no longer needs to be displayed: it just is, like an oppressive background norm. Patriarchy in reverse and in a nutshell.
And by describing men as utterly vulnerable, physically and psychologically Alderman forces the reader, male or otherwise, to reflect in an uncomfortable and vivid way on the value of nurture against nature. She also is critiquing the idea that men and women are inherently different, that men are naturally more violent or brutal or sexually aggressive and women are somehow more passive, gentle or kind.
It is important to also question the structures and institutions that enable male privilege which means reflecting on and challenging the treatment of women in our own society and the insidious means by which gender privileges and inequality become normalised.
By inversing the world as we know it and the norms we accept, Alderman makes clear that the only “power” necessary to challenge abuse is empathy and caring.
How does ethic of care and love relate to universities and to my teaching methods and pedagogy?
Once again, I really enjoyed the last session as it gave me and confirmed many ideas that I am going to incorporate or reinforced in my future lectures such as:
- Inclusive wording that emphasis the feeling of belonging
- Give guidance with respect for their ideas and feelings
- Ask open questions to assess their needs and interest
- Listen carefully and note body language (if possible) for clue on how they feel and how well they understood the learning outcome
- Stay online for a while after an online lecture in order to allow for students to talk to me about anything they wish to (as it used to be possible when lecturing at LCC)
- Create a Collaborate space just for students so they can meet there to communicate & collaborate – Strongly encourage WhatsApp group for the whole cohort.
- Address their fear of exposing themselves (by answering a question or just talking) use sentence like “there is no right or wrong answer, we are brainstorming”
- Embracing failure and allowing for mistakes
- Offer different activities in lectures such as games, quizzes, group discussions
- Treat them as professionals and let them learn on the job as much as possible
- Encourage teamwork and constructive and loving critical analysis
- Demonstrating the importance of what they are learning for their future career (increase engagement)
- Make sure content is clear, academic jargon free (for students who have English as a second language), meaningful and relevant
- Teacher / student relationship should be caring, trustful, respectful, nurturing, emancipating and empowering.
- Use humour as a mean to reduce barriers and distance and to increase engagement and interaction
- Create a space of trust so that students feel safe when expressing themselves
- Being aware of social economic differences and their environment when in the online classroom
- Universities have a moral relationship with students and therefore a duty of care.