Caring and Pedagogy

By Stephen Downes
Nov 28, 2021
Transcript of Caring and Pedagogy

Unedited transcript from audio by Google Recorder.

Hi. This is Stephen Downes once again for ethics analytics and the duty of care. We're in module six. This is the presentation on caring and pedagogy and a couple preliminaries before we get going. First of all hum here in the background, is the fan because Andrea is doing some baking that's life in the pandemic, right?

And then, actually, that's life is me. I don't have a nice studio where I can record these things. So you're gonna get some background noises that just the way it is of, I don't see if I can't filter that out at some point in the future, but right now it can't really be helped and you know, it's life, right?

You're getting real life here? Secondly, I'm looking at the image that I'm using as the title slide here and I'm sensitive to the fact that it represents a number of the things that I found is criticisms of a pedagogy or sorry of an ethics of care. You know, we've got, you know, the standard group of people sitting around a computer or two computers or, you know, they actually look like maybe surface pads or mac airs or whatever.

I don't, I can't really tell but, you know, you see how we have the authority figure hovering over them. The, the white male teacher, who's obviously in charge has his arms crossed in a position of judgment. We've got the the center figure is a hoodie figure obviously in some way or another minority, we know that because of the the the there is a not to diversity.

I know the skull cap on one of the participants here and down in the lower right hand corner, you can just see the long hair of a woman participant, so it's not all male but you know, it's just so hacked need and it's so from the perspective of, you know, the the people who are doing the caring or in this case, at least providing the service.

And I think that the same scene taken from the perspective of the person in the center of the room would be much more interesting. Anyhow. That's a little critical pedagogy for you right there with respect to the title image. Also, before I get going, I want to come back to something.

I raised the other day and that, that's the creative common shirt that I was wearing. Here it is. And I made a comment about it, being manufactured in Hong Kong. It was not manufactured in Hong Kong, it was mainly affected. I don't know if I'll be able to show you this, but I'm gonna try running because, you know, oh, it's it's kind of beat up.

I've worn it a lot.

All right, there we go. I don't think it'll focus. Yeah, maybe there. Yeah, you can just barely see it made in Nicaragua and by a company called next level apparel. So of course because, you know, I'm socially responsible, I looked up next level apparel to find out about them.

And so here they are. They're based in Southern California, though. I guess they're shirts are made everywhere up there. They're overall, you know, they have overall apparel generally, not just shirts but I like, you know, the way they emphasize community sustainability inclusivity. And that's the kind of structural structural approach that is needed.

When you think of an ethics of care. Not just a prop, not just, as a property of individuals, but as a property of communities and of society, so kudos to creative comments. Now, I maybe there's stuff about this company. I don't know, but what this tells me is that they at least I created of commons at least thought about it.

Thought about sourcing the shirts sustainably and ethically and responsibly. And so I think that's a good thing. So, today were talking about the topic of caring and pedagogy. And I deliberately not, I deliberately didn't put pedagogy of care in the title because that's not really what we're talking about.

In this particular presentation, we're talking more generally about the idea of the intersection between caring and pedagogy, because there's two ways in which this happens. First of all, if you have the presumption of an ethics of care as being, not just an individual, but a community value, then you're going to want to say something about how you teach care.

Assuming that cares is not innate or the ability to care is not innate. And and you know, I see sometimes representations of a philosophy of care and ethics of care from a feminist perspective. As representing the idea of that it is innate, it is unique to women. And in particular, you need to women who have been in a caring relationship.

But most of what I've read virtually, all of what I've read doesn't lean in that direction. It leans into direction of care as something that can be learned something that can be taught. And that there are ways that we can approach the teaching of care such that, it is promoted.

As not only a personal ethic, but a community ethic as instantiated in the company that creative comments used to sources t-shirts. So there's that and then as well, there's the pedagogy of care which takes a look at the the art or the profession of teaching as a care profession and what that entails.

So I'll touch briefly on that near the end. But let's get into this now. So the way we're going to get into this is we're going to be given with the concept of democratic education. And the reason why we're getting into the concept of democratic education is because that's where the ethics of care begins as well.

We look at bill hooks in teaching community. She writes educators who challenge themselves to teach beyond the classroom setting to move into the world sharing knowledge, learn a diversity of styles to convey information and additionally authoritative try that again. Authoritarianism in the classroom, the humanizers and less shut down.

The magic that is always present when humans are when individuals are active learners. And this is something that we've seen reflected in numerous theories of education. You see it reflected in my own approach to education my own approach to learning, generally where we're moving first of all, moving away from the model of education, where there isn't authority where that authority, spreads knowledge and the people in the class receive knowledge.

In other words, we're moving away from the image. Despite the fact that it was on a website titled pedagogy of care, we're moving away from the image that we saw on our title screen. But we're also moving away from the idea that education and educators are things that simply and only exist in the classroom.

The act of education is broader than that. The act of teaching is broader than that. And you know Bill Hooks is approached recognizes that I think and this is something that has become mainstream and that's why I wanted to put in here. The reference frame reference framework of competencies for democratic culture of the council of Europe.

And I'm just stumbling over my words a bit. So I'll get a little liquid into myself. You know, doing things like dealing with propaganda misinformation and fake news, but also improving well, being at school making children's and students voices heard, I'd go further and and give them actual power preventing violence and bullying obviously and tackling discrimination.

So the idea here is that education is at least beginning to express. Some of the principles of care that were also finding in the field of health care and other professions and that's important. And that's the starting point for all of this, in an ethics of care, especially as it relates to teaching and education.

There's a commitment to not just diversity, but also pluralism, there's a few things about this discussion that resonate with me and I don't even go over them in a little bit of detail. Okay, the first thing is the assertion here that again from bell, hooks pluralism is not diversity.

Pluralism, is a response to the fact of diversity, in pluralism. We commit to engage with the other person, or the other community pluralism, is a commitment to communicate with and relate to the larger world. Now, in my own work, I have something called the semantic condition. The semantic condition argues that as a property of networks, in order to achieve a properly functioning network.

You need four elements, diversity interaction, openness and autonomy. Now we've discussed autonomy earlier and and there are different ways we could look at that. And now we've discussed diversity here with respect to pluralism. Now we might say it's not a bad way of saying it that pluralism is kind of the combination of diversity and interactivity.

But if you make, you know, if you think of it from the perspective of a network, it kind of makes sense, kind of makes it really, makes it makes a lot of sense. Because diversity is an asset, any individual within a network wants to get signals or communications from a diverse range of sources.

They're variety of reasons for that most notably that if they're getting information from the same range of sources then they're not really acting in any sort of a value of or considering capacity. They're just simply passing along whatever they've heard which goes against the principle of interactiveness in an artwork because learning in a network, isn't just passing on stuff that you've heard.

It's reacting to and coming up with your own perspective and passing that along creating a pattern of interaction in the network. And that pattern itself is what constitutes learning. You don't get patterns unless you have not simply the existence of diversity in the network. But a network structure such that individuals in the network are touching on and interacting with a variety of diverse individuals.

So more broadly and more structurally. Looking at it maybe from a sociological point of view. What you're trying to do is to create an environment where people don't just interact with people of their own kind, but interact with a wide range of people. And then you can get into a larger discussion of this of the impact of this.

And you know we've I think we've all seen or maybe should have all seen cases or examples of where people encounter another culture, or another perspective for for the first time and their view of the world is in some important way changed. And certainly, in this field, there's a commitment to talking to individuals who are impacted not just directly by our care.

But the members of the wider community that might be impacted by the decisions that we make, and the way we conduct ourselves. So this idea is represented visually on the slide in this paper of on, I know, ontology of climate change, believe it or not, but still you still have the same idea of the singularity, the mono vision.

Then you have a disc and discontinuity where there's many different diverse entities in the network but they're not connected. And then multiplicity, which is described here is one and many, which is pluralism where you have these diverse perspectives, but they overlap the interact with each other. And so, it's interesting because the points to the problem, if you will not so much of embracing diversity, people at Harvard are happy to have black people, or religious minorities, or whatever, but the problem is resisting awesome.

They're not, they're happy to have them in the school but they're not gonna socialize with. No, they're not gonna welcome them to the club, okay? Maybe that's unfair, it probably is unfair but you know, you get the idea of integration of neighborhoods, right? And so do you have people diverse people in your neighborhood?

But when you're making friends and interacting with people, you the problem is people are still interacting with their own kind, whatever that kind happens to be. I'm reminded of when I grew up in the suburb of candyac, it's a suburb of Montreal and we live right next door to French people.

We never interacted with them, we interacted with the English people down the road, the English people up at the corner, not the French people at all. I never knew any French people the entire time, I lived there and that's a problem, right? Because the hats what leads to conflict rather than engagement and a wider society of care, it's an aspect of this is culturally responsiveness.

I'm sorry. Cultural responsiveness. And, in particular here, we're talking about culturally responsive instruction. I might broaden that to say culturally responsive education or even culturally responsive learning but here the suggestion is it should focus on improving the learning capacity of the marginalized education. There's my let's I think my slide is covering some words here.

Oh yeah it's definitely covering some words here. That's really annoying.

Okay, so focus on the learning capacity of communities that have been marginalized educational because of historically, devalued or underfunded. I'm not sure what the exact words has school systems. It's just center around, both the affect of incognitive domains of teaching and learning just working for memory here, folks. And it should build a cognitive capacity in academic mindset by pushing back a dominant narratives, about people of color, and I would say, pushing back on dominant narratives, aka stereotypes.

Not only about people of color but about women about religious minorities, about indigenous people of gaze and lesbians, and trans, and questioning and, and tea spirit. And the rest, the idea here is to look at your community not as a single cohesive whole, but to recognize embrace and value, the different cultures that are represented within it.

And so there's there's two aspects, right? The first of all, is the aspect of actually having this diversity in your community because not all communities have this diversity and then the second aspect is actually working with it and making it a value or a strength.

So I talked about the semantic condition. Another one of the principles that I mentioned is openness and, and an effort to teach or educate or even learn about an ethics of care opening. This is again, another one of these values and you see that reflected in Bill hooks again as well.

And just as an aside, I really am seeing a lot of overlap there just to be clear. I was influenced to my own thinking, in no, way by Bell hooks. But it's interesting to see how these kinds of views converge and she's coming from a completely different perspective from me.

And yet, there was some overlap here in the things that she sees as important and the things that I see as important. And so we read one of the most positive outcomes is a commitment to quote, radical openness closed. Quote, the will to explore different perspectives and change once mind as new information is presented.

Now, I've never represented that as quote, unquote will, right? I don't work in in terms of will and, and other elements of what could be called, folks psychology nonetheless, openness, however, it is accomplished by an individual in a community or in a network is a value. It's one of these things that makes the network work makes the community work.

And you know, we can talk about it leading to a community of care, which is good, but we can also talk about it as leading to a community that don't want to say searches for the truth because that's not quite right. But a community that is a pistemologically robust.

How about that in the sense that the knowledge beliefs and overall community culture will be improved. And the suggestion here in Hooks is, it's improved by the fact that it becomes a community where the ethics of care exists. But my my take would be, it's improved by whatever constitutes being improved.

So I'm not prepared to commit to saying, the ethics of care is the ideal endpoint for a community. And I don't think hooks would say that either. But I do want to say that this sorts of things that hooks says lead to this understanding and instantiation of an ethics of care and a community is the same sort of thing that I'm talking about.

She also comments competitive education, rarely works for students who have been socialized to value working for the good of the community and I find that a fascinating remark. I think it's also true of research and the professions generally, it's really weird to think of, for example, competitive health care.

You know, it almost brings to mind the era of ambulance chases. Of course that's competitive law but you know, ambulance chasing you. Imagine if it was an accident and there were competing health care companies, arriving on the scene, they used to happen. In the case of fires, it's very well represented in the movie gangs of New York.

We had royal rival. Fired apartments thing, out of fire and breaking out into a fight with each other rather than actually fighting the fire. And I find it true in my own experience. You know, I work with the public service, I'm trying to work for the good of the community and yet in the wider academic environment and indeed the wider funding environment.

There's this constant push to have me compete with other researchers and other projects or other programs for funding resources and support. And you know, it just all of that. None of that works for me because I want to work with these other people rather than against them. There's an element in all of this and I wasn't sure where to place it, but I'll place it here because in again, in my work, it shows up and my approach to teaching and research where there's this attempt to reduce and here, I'm quoting nodings all teaching and learning to one well defined method as part of a larger pattern in science, epistemology and ethics.

And it has been, it has been criticized by many contemporary theorists. Now, the title of this sludge remind people of the title of a book by oh, jeez torture. I'm terrible with names. Terrible Paul fire event. Again called against methane, right? And there's this, you know, longstanding tradition. That there's a thing called scientific method, and it's characterized by, you know, a hypothetical deductive system or deductive nominal logical system, where, you know, you come up with a hypothesis, the hypothesis makes predictions in the world, you go out and test those predictions and the result of that test, either confirms or disconfirms or falsifies that hypothesis.

So you have Karl hempel promoting this. The false of occasion is attributed to Carl popper. There's a huge, there's a wealth of discussion on this. You know, a lot of this comes from the logical positive is tradition, but the idea of a scientific method and dates back to Francis Bacon and the original inductive method and has been with us ever since day cart talks about discourse on method.

And you know, it's part and parcel with this idea of ethical universality, this methodological universality is subject to many of the same sorts of criticisms. And, you know, here we have again, we're still quoting here from nodding's talking about theologian, Mary Daly, calling this pursuit methodology. I guess it's like idolatry.

But with respect to method, it's the worship of method and, and says, philosopher, scientists, and many other thinkers have tried since the time of day cart, and before to substitute foolproof method, for the situated, living human being, who must think and decide method became all important. We see this in teaching as well and there's been a lot of criticism over the years about connectivism based on the the idea of that.

It's not a learning theory because a learning theory would have this all encompassing method. But for my perspective, what essential about connectivism is this human who must think can decide and connectivism. In general talks, a lot about the autonomy of the individual in a network. Now again, we talked about autonomy, and the idea that we don't want to have a theory that rests simply and solely on the autonomy of individuals as compared to the community as a whole, right?

We want to be able to talk about the ethics of a community, as well as the ethics of an individual, for example, and I get that and I agree with that. At the same time, we want to be careful, not to impose some kind of structural overlay on how these individuals and how these communities should actually think and decide in the moment.

Each community is going to be different. Each individual is going to be different. It's going to depend on the concrete facts at the time and that's why we diversity of communities, right? If there were just one universal, good, best method performing communities, then presumably you know if science is right.

They would all converge to the same model and sometimes people rarify say democracy as that model, but there's a lot of trains today for a Sunday. I wonder what's going on Any help, believe outside. See if that's the sort of thing, right? There's a lot of trainings for us, Sunday, general planes.

Don't have accommodate the fact that there are a lot of trains on a Sunday and, you know, okay, I'm trying to make that work and maybe not to get the idea, right? It's more about the individual or the community or global society in the context of the time. And that's, you know, but in the philosophy of science is an idea that goes back to Thomas, Coon writing in the 1970s and ironically the international encyclopedia of the unification of the scientists, very, ironically, cocoon is famous for coming up with the concept of a paradigm.

A research paradigm for example, paradigm, shifts scientific revolutions. All the like and we sort of have this natural inclination to think you know each scientific revolution is better and better and better. You're not particular reason to believe that except perhaps by the results of what was produced. But what what's important for coon and what's relevant for?

Our senses are for our purposes is that when we're looking at the the scientists and the scientific community within a specific paradigm, we need to consider it and evaluate it from the perspective of that paradigm. Otherwise we're committed to saying things like Aristotle was really stupid and Aristotle was not really stupid and there's no reason to believe he was really stupid.

I wonder if I'm actually recording. No, I'm not. Well, I'm recording but I'm not streaming. That's too bad. I wonder what happened and it's stream, finished. Okay, so I'm gonna keep recording. Anyways, something broke in YouTube, but I'll upload this video and it'll still be all fine. That's really annoying.

When that happens, I probably broke when for some reasons that window went to their light screen, went to that window. Any help?

So, what does that tell us about the moral education needed in order to promote an ethical community, where that ethics is in ethics of caring, right? And and here, I'm gonna actually refer to Jenny McNessus summary of no nodding. So it's very good. No recommend reading it. We're, we have, the ethical ideal is to be the one caring and to meet the other morally.

Now, again, want to be careful because we're not working in terms of ideals or universal principles, right? So, what I think we want to say here is that to be ethical is to be the one caring and to meet the other morally or something like that. You know, it's not an idea toward which we all aspire and we have this universal of an ethics of care, which we should all be.

It's more like, in order to promote and ethics of care. We need to teach in a caring manner, and I think we capture that in this quote, from noddings, moral education from the perspective of an ethic of caring, has four major components modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation. I compared almost immediately with my own downs theory of education, which I have said many times is ironic because it's not really a theory.

And it doesn't originate with me nor is, is a unique to me. So it's kind of like, you know, news not limits or the news, not units or whatever, it's one of these self rents and soft depreciating or you know like lane laney to multimedia in court of encoders, anyhow.

So the the downs educational theory says to teach is to model and demonstrate to learn is to practice and reflect and so we we can see in a way these same for components in nodding's approach to moral education. And I also run through that with the ideas of choice, identity and creativity that represents the the path of the learner through this model.

And we've talked about choice or autonomy. We've talked about identity to a certain degree. We haven't talked a lot about creativity, but it's there and in an ethics of care. I've been seen in discussion of the ethics of care and creativity. I'm sure it's out there. I just haven't reviewed that.

So anyhow, so we have these components so that's look at these components for a bit modeling. The idea here is that we do not tell our students to care. We show them how to care by creating caring relationships or caring relations with them, and why? Because the capacity to care maybe dependent on adequate experience in being cared for make sense, right?

So the distinction here is between modeling and telling and I think it's a really important distinction and it's it's one I've talked about many times. And so in order to promote, if you will and ethics of care, certainly in order to teach about an ethics of care or to maybe more accurately, provide an opportunity for people to learn about an ethics of care.

You need to model the ethics of care by yourself being caring and not that includes a variety of things, a variety of personal properties. I don't see it as an expression of the will so-called, but I do see it as the adopting of a range of attitudes and behaviors everything from facilitation to self-care to unconditional acceptance of others adaptation health wholeism etc.

Right now we we could talk about at some length about exactly what should be modeled. But here again, right? We we don't want to the same into a false universalism and that's kind of why I respond to Jamie. McNessus statement. The ethical ideal is to be one caring and to meet the other morally.

We can say it like that, but there's no one thing that all and only people who are the one caring should be actually being carrying is going to vary from circumstances to circumstance to circumstance. And together, we can call all of these circumstances, instances of caring and therefore, the person doing it as being the one caring.

But, you know, we can't define it in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions is going to be as a category more. Like what they can sign would call a family resemblance, right? Or in the language of my own epistemology, it, they will be instances of what we would recognize as carrying behavior, where our recognition is trained on experiences of being cared for and observations of other people.

Caring dialogue is the, it's an important consideration here. And so, I am going to consider that for our purposes as the demonstration aspect of the relationship, right? So because we had to modeling demonstrate practice and reflect. So the dialogue is the demonstration part, we've got the modeling bit, right?

But the dialogue is talking about whatever has been modeled. So we're not just doing it. We're actually demonstrating it, sometimes people in educational theory, talk about worked examples and this is kind of like that except we don't just present people with a worked example, rather. We take the model as the beginning or the starting point of the conversation.

And that's why nodding says, you know, it's not just talk or conversations. It's not presentation but it's something open ended. We're engaged in the common search here. Now she says for understanding apathy or appreciation, but it could be a comment search for pretty much anything to do with what were talking about.

And, you know, you can highlight understanding apathy or appreciation as elements of the ethics of care. But you know, if we're engaged in a dialogue about learning how to do something, anything about what we're talking about is fair game. This is what knottings called in grossment, you know? And again, it's not just idle chit chat.

We're actually paying attention to each other communicating with each other and attending to each other and this gets back to what I was talking about earlier when I talked about active listening, and, and the program that I took all those years ago, right? Active listening is an example of an approach to attending in such a way that you're engrossed in the conversation to engage in dialogue, says Bell hooks is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars and critical thinkers to cross boundaries, this interaction back and forth between ourselves and people who are modeling or instantiating different ways of different thing of doing things.

Different ways of living, different cultures, etc, and it ties back to Democratic education. Conversation says hooks is the central location of pedagogy for the democratic educator. It's important to understand what is going on in conversation here. A lot of people will represent conversation in kind of a theoretical perspective, where the conversation has a purpose or an end in mind and it's based on say the construction of a common model or common reality or shared understanding or it's to engage in a shared practice of making meaning etc.

And I want to reject all of that and I want to reject all of that again, because of this universalism thing. There is no universal description of how conversation applies to the teaching and learning process. They the act of conversation in itself is the teaching and learning process. And what happens at least to my mind is that what we are doing is experiencing the other person in the act of doing whatever it is that they're doing and being clear about what they're thinking process is and that how we attend to that and how we integrate that experience with the rest of our experiences varies from person to person to person, we don't all make models or make meeting right?

And it would be a mistake to say, no, this is the attitude you should take to conversation now. Not at all. You just trying to learn. And what you're trying to do here is not to memorize not to build structures, but just to take in and integrate in some way, however, is appropriate for the circumstances, what your experiencing and what you're seeing very often, it would be for the replication of a behavior.

Sometimes it will be for the understanding of a person's point of view. Sometimes it be in order to provide the best possible care to that person. You see the and it's always going to be a blend of things like that and other things like that. And so it's a mistake to say you know, there has to be the specific purpose of the conversation.

We have, you know, almost the example of the sort of perspective that I'm reacting to in critical digital pedagogy and here I'm borrowing from Jesse, Stumbles description of it. It's interesting because you know I mean we can look even at the different meaning of critical and this is what he does here.

Critical as in mission critical critical as in literary criticism critical as in reflected a nuance critical. As in criticizing impediments or barriers to learning or critical as a disciplinary approach. I like that. I like the many meanings of critical when we talk about critical pedagogy. I have the same kind of thing in mind.

When I talk about critical literacies, I have all of these different meanings of critical, but I want to apply to constant to concepts of meanings, but we don't want to take that and turn it into a recipe for pedagogy, right? So, let's look at this, a critical digital pedagogy perspective on mooks, involves generating collaborative spaces for intrinsically, motivating co-intentional education, online, learning and critical practice and demands.

That open educational environments, be more than content, repositories, therefore, a mook. Cannot simply be a delivery device, but must first be aimed at building empowered communities. Making MOOCs a space for dialogue openness and change. Well, that's pretty prescriptive and some milk. Should do that, some should do some of that, but it would be a mistake that all looks should do all of that.

And only that there are contacts in which having a content repository, is a really useful and helpful thing because of the limited participation in this MOOC I'm kind of hoping this is one of those circumstances, right? I think YouTube, taking as a whole is one of those circumstances YouTube does not become meaningless or unhealthful simply because the interaction capacity is so terrible.

I was going to say because it lacks it, but no, it doesn't lock it, it has it, it's just, it's awful. Number read becomes on YouTube video, so the same sort of thing here, right? So, similarly, I don't agree that we're engaged in the process of co-intentional education, each individual in an education, interaction has their own objectives, their own goals, their own purposes, their own methods, their own ideas, around background knowledge, and the idea of that, all of, that should somehow more into co-intentional.

Education seems wrong. It actually, it seems miraculous like that would ever happen. And so I think making that an intent would be a mistake. Again, the idea of a move can even critical pedagogy in a mood, isn't to create this mechanism, where we all become, as one, it is to create this mechanism.

And in which all the individual variables, the different cultures, the different perspectives are uniquely valued and embraced so it's not about creating co-intentional education. It's about creating diverse pluralistic responsive engaged and grossed attentive education and even that might be asking too much and to be defining it too specifically.

The next stage is practice and we see practice talked about quite a bit with respect to an ethic of care and particularly with respect to sharing the ethics of care. And the sense in which I take it here as opposed to modeling care, is the practice on the part of the learner in providing care attitudes and mentalities are shaped by experiences.

There's lots of evidence for that and training programs don't just teach the knowledge or skills, but they shape the mind. So I've represented this not as shaping a mind which is really very much like a power relation right here. The master architecture shapes the mind and the people into the nuts, not what's happening at all.

But what we want to happen is for the person, the learner to actually have experience of being the carer in a carrying relation and being the cared for in a caring relation and these experiences are both cases of practicing and ethics of care. And that is what if you will shape's minds?

Although it's not an intentional shaping of a mind. It's more like a more unintentional growing of a mind into a person who is who instantiates and ethics of care. So the recommendation here in this reference is for things like for example, community service, but not just community service. Qua community service, right?

I was not just picking up garbage off the side of the highway or something like that, it's community service, but with people who demonstrate caring, so you're in this community service environment, people around, you are modeling, caring, and part of this community service. Is you engaging and caring practices as well?

Finally, and this is this is the part that perhaps there's the least accord with the downs theory of education. Is this idea of confirmation? And this, I think all this almost speaks to the background. And I noticed this in a number of the authors. They're coming from a background in religion, and theology, they're bringing concepts from religious writers into the realm of ethics.

And hence, here we have Martin Boober who describes confirmation as an act of affirming and encouraging the best in others confirmation at least in the religion that I practiced when I was young, is a process where you affirm and state your belief in the religion. And you do that at a time, when you are presumed to be an adult and able to make that as a free choice.

Now just for the record, I was not an adult and I was not making that as a pretty choice. Well, it was sort of making that is a free choice, but I think I was like 12 or 13 or something and I was making a free choice very much in the context of the community in which I was living.

But but come formation as well, is an approach where you're saying, you know, it's not about whether or not you have achieved this perfect ideal but whether or not, you can see yourself growing and developing and moving towards something that is your best. Now we want to be careful here.

Remember, we go back to virtue ethics, right? And the concept of, you know, being all that you can be, don't think that's really this. But it's more like, well, more like what we read here think this is not. Yeah, it is not things. We do not set up a single ideal, or set of expectations for everyone to meet, but we identify something admirable or at least acceptable struggling to merge emerge in each person we encounter.

So it's something like seeing the good in others. Now, let's not exactly what I mean by reflection, but then again I don't mean anything in particular about reflection. So so this could be an instance of it. The whole concept of reflection from me is an almost unconscious process of just letting the experience settle and merge with the rest of our experiences.

And then drawing out of that, whatever we can here, it's a case of drawing out. The best of whatever it is that we can of confirming. What was good in the experience as opposed to groaning and complaining about what was bad about the experience. So I can see this as, you know, as a value is something that would be affirmed in an ethics of care.

I'm a bit more globalist here when I'm reflecting on an experience, I want to reflect on all of the aspects of the experience. And if I had to employ a condition, I would employ salience rather than goodness. You know, it's what aspects of the experience, were the most vivid, the most memorable, the most important.

The most impactful that to me is probably what I would want to drop from it but I can certainly see the motivation for wanting to find the good in our experiences about others. Particularly when we think about how that's going to be reflected, back to them in our ongoing discussion and in our ongoing relationship of care and you know, even generally there's this idea of thinking with care, you know.

And as yeah, we can think of this as a mechanism of reflection, or perhaps guidance on what might be good caring reflection. And Here we have Dila, Bella Casa referencing back to Donna, Harroway's, relational, ontology, of the different ways of reflecting on our interactions with others. So, we can be thinking with thinking with other people, actually engaging in the thoughts with them, you know.

And, and, you know, the actual concrete embedded nature of our interactions with them. And I love this story of heroy. Surprising a room by in her keynote. Basically structuring her keynote around stories of personal care for her, dog. Cayenne Now, I would never name a dog cayenne, but, you know, maybe it was a chihuahua or something, I don't.

But I love the concept and and I do love the idea of taking very specific concrete experiences and structuring a presentation around them. I might do that more or I might not because it did surprise the room. There's also the idea of descending within, you know, the relationality is everything but this does not mean a world without conflict or dissension.

And that's a fact, that's an observable fact and I think that, you know, when we're talking about attending to conversing with and respecting the expressed needs of the cared for, it doesn't mean that we're in a position now where we do everything that the cared for wants and this is an important concept, we are not servants or slaves, and there is a criticism of care ethics that it is, you know, quote unquote, a slave mentality, but it is not the relation of care is an interactive relationship.

Both parties have power, both parties have responsibility, it's about being accurate and correct, and assessing and understanding what the needs are of that person. But also being aware of one's own condition when one's own needs for self-care as well as you know what the impact is on other members of the community, both the immediate community, and the water community, perhaps even as appropriate.

So, the global community. So of course there's gonna be conflict. Your need for care, might conflict with my need for self-care. You might be drowning and I can't swim. If I serve only your need and jumping and try to save you, I'm putting myself at risk. So there's a conflict there and how we respond to that conflict.

You know, can't be expressed by a general principle, but it's on the the circumstances Could I possibly save that person, even though I can't swim? Is there a way to do that? Is there a way to jump in and save the person? I don't know how but but you know, imagine a circumstance, You know, maybe the water's three feet deep and I don't really need to be able to swim but they're panicking and drowning in three feet, deep water, Hell just things like that.

Thinking four is the third and it is quote, a commitment to value. Knowledge generated through any context of subjugation. And that's important because the person who has been oppressed, the person who has been disadvantaged or is in a position of vulnerability has a unique and distinctive perspective on those conditions.

And so that point of view needs to be given some kind of privilege in our overall assessment because remember care is about, you know, the the, you know, we're measuring our interactions with others measuring the wrong word there. But we'll leave that aside from a perspective of vulnerability and we're trying to address conditions of vulnerability address conditions of injustice or oppression.

So where that exists, that is the thing that if recognize and valued becomes the thing that produces in us, a sense of urgency and motivation. So thinking for is the first step in that process, you know, in our interaction with someone else. The first thing we do is to acknowledge and take into account how they might be speaking or behaving from a position of subjugation or oppression, and our responsibility from an ethics of care is to be begin by mitigating, that is much as we can.

So there is a way of reflecting on an experience that is non-normative and I'm not going to talk about any of these things. As normative. I'm not going to say these are the things that we have to do. But these are aspects of the things that we do and they're elements of reflection that result in a reflection that results in Ithaca of care, or, maybe more accurately are characteristic of a reflection that is consistent with and ethic of care.

The whole idea here. I just, I threw in this slide, I'm inclusion. Perhaps it belongs more in community or democracy. But I think it's important because again, it's speaks back to this idea of trying, to create a commonality or a unified purpose around the process of teaching and learning, right?

And there isn't a fifth circle here, like there should be a fifth circle and the fifth circle should consist of all, and only green dots. And that circle would be assimilation, right? Assimilation has been in too. Many people still is the objective of community. Assimilation. Basically, means having everybody adopt, the a common goal, a common belief, set, a common perspective, a common worldview, a common language, or some combination of all of those things and others that are similar to it.

And you know you see efforts toward assimilation when you see efforts to have people share a common purpose or develop a common model or speak. The same language reach common definitions of terms. It's a very common one, you know, and I find assimilation personally to be very problematic, especially since what happens, in the case of assimilation is whatever the dominant beliefs and values, perspectives, etc, are of the majority.

These are imposed on the minority and we saw that in Canada with the residential schools where the process was one of assimilation. We were attempting to take indigenous people's and make them like us and and in retrospect that was wrong in retrospect that was wrong at the time. But and and that's still happening in other societies today.

And, you know, there are societies where people say, you know, there can be only one language. There can be only one religion we've seen through history. Various ways of approaching how a society, especially one with a dominant majority represented here, by the green circle works with or manages. The question of people who are in minorities represented here by the red blue and yellow circles, one of them is exclusion or you know you just don't let them into the society of all I call that our immigration policy.

No that's not true. But but you know, I mean, for long time, it was right for a long time. Our immigration policy was geared toward accepting only people with certain properties to a large degree. It still is to a large degree. Our immigration policy is directed toward accepting only people with skills with linguistic capacities, with a willingness to adapt, etc and the exceptions to that such as family, immigration or refugees are found as particularly problematic, to various people.

I'm not one of those, the other approaches segregation, where, okay, they're in the society. But often they're on private places and South Africa that was a part-time where the green dots were actually the minority in the US. It was, of course actual segregation. But you know, it doesn't necessarily need to be a policy of segregation.

You can find this develop on a more informal and unplanned basis as well. Segregation if enforced is a bad thing, but I think that there should be room for people to be able to form their own community. So you know, it's six of one half dozen of the other here, right?

It's and this is where taking the view or the perspective of, in this case, the minority is what's really important here. Because we're asking well, how would you like to live in our society? You know how would you want to structure this what works for you and if they say you know, I want to live near say other Chinese people or you know, I want to live say in the gay village that's perfectly acceptable and that view should be allowed to prevail integration is kind of like that.

Where you you create these special areas within your society to accommodate these particular groups. So that is I'm trying to tell that is a gay village. But there's still this line of segregation actually. I don't really see a huge difference between segregation. They integration as their described in this diagram, except segregation is actually keeping them apart from the rest of society.

And so is much more like a part-tied in a literal sense. Whereas integration allows them to be within the society, but they're still walls. Finally, we have inclusion which is policy in Canada and I think for the better and which we have a society in which each individual can maintain their own culture and their own social identity, they can keep their distinctiveness as being green, or red, or blue, or yellow.

But we all share the same society and if you go to Mississauga, you see that. If you watch breakfast television, you see that from city TV? You see that? And that is indeed a model. I think that Canada is trying to present. I think it's a good model but it does involve and ethics and a social policy of care.

You actually have to think of the other person as human you actually have to take into account that they are in a minority and therefore maybe experiencing oppression and are certainly in a more vulnerable position. And therefore you have to take special care The same applies with things like language rights.

Right In Canada we have a linguistic majority and a linguistic minority. And people say well why should you give Quebec special privileges for French? But you have to take the perspective of the people who are in the minority, who might fear for example, that Near Language would be wiped out and therefore the have a special interest in preserving and protecting that language that doesn't mean you agree with everything they say but that's where you begin your discussion and that's the dialogue of inclusion by contrast.

We have exclusion and this is the opposite of care arguably. And and this want to point out the many ways here, and in, which societies exclude people who most properly we should be including historically we've seen groups exclude because of their socioeconomic status, their culture including indigenous cultures linguistic group or language religion, geography, gender sexual orientation age physical, and mental health, or ability status, with regard to unemployment, homelessness and incarceration.

And there are probably more things left out of this list, my own history suggests that having a long hair and beard is a reason for being excluded. I don't know if I really counts as a disadvantaged group but you know, it does illustrate that. This list could be extended, probably indefinitely.

And that's why again, you know, you we can't just have sweeping generalizations, right? We can't have a list of the kinds of injustice or vulnerability. That will be considered to the exclusion of the rest. I don't think anybody who lists these bases for inclusion are intending to not include others, who may be disadvantaged for vulnerable in different ways.

And if I'm pretty sure they're not, but there needs to be in my mind and explicit affirmation that. It doesn't matter what the basis for exclusion is if the group is excluded or at risk of being excluded, then their vulnerable, then our discussions with them need to begin with a recognition of that vulnerability and therefore, you know, an attempt to redress that, at least from the perspective.

And for the purposes of engaging in an actual dialogue and reflection, I find this interesting. The Jim Bell Hooks, Bill Hooks rights a lot about love. One of the most important things that I ever read on giving presentations. It's not the most important thing, The book by Keith Spicer called Winging it with probably the most important thing.

But what I read was advice to and I quote, love your audience. Now there are ways in which that would be very inappropriate. Those are the ways that I mean, what the sense of love your audience is, is if you're up there giving a talk, it's very tempting to be, you know, self-critical self-reflective concern that they might be unhappy.

With the way you're presenting yourself concerned with how you're being perceived concern, not you might not really be as knowledgeable as you need to be in order to be presenting on this subject, you know, self-diding self-doubting. Self-facing, sometimes even self-sabotaging, what's that expression? The the imposter syndrome, right? You might be vulnerable to the imposter syndrome feeling like you're faking it.

And the concept of love your audience is this that at least at the start of the talk, everybody is in that room because they want to see you and that's pretty remarkable. I'm always when I give a talk astounded by that, there I am. I'm the guy up on the podium and there's a whole bunch of people who are there to see me to listen to me, to watch my bad slides.

And how can you not love them for that, you know, and when, when you see it that way all of a sudden, all you want to do up on that stage, is to give as much of yourself to that audience as possible, not to justify your or anything like that, but more even out of a out of the consciousness of, you know, this is great.

These people really want what I have to share. Let me share with them as fully as possible. And so, you know, I mean, I say things that the beginning of my talks, like, you know, this talk isn't for me. It's for you. If you need to meet and do something different, from what I'm doing, do that.

And that applies generally, if you are actually listening to this video right now and we're well into the video. I don't know how far we're in because YouTube isn't recording it anymore. So I don't have a counter. But man, I love you. I can't believe that you're listening to this, or if you're reading this text, it's amazing that you're reading this text.

Now we're not in you know, interactive relationship right now so I can't change what I'm doing in order to accommodate your specific need. But no, this if I could, I would in the meantime instead of worrying about maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe my words aren't perfect enough, etc.

I'm just going to give as fully as possible. You see that a lot in the arts you as, you know, especially in music, but in acting and and other things as well, where, you know, the the conversion from somebody who's trying to be a performer to somebody who is a performer, is the fullness of their participation in the performance.

And you can actually see especially in young performers that point in time where they just let go of all of those concerns about themselves and just give themselves over to the performance. And that's when it becomes brilliant, right? And it's not that this self-doubt and all of that doesn't exist.

It's just for this moment, we'll just do away with that. I can worry about that later but for now I'll just pour myself into this. I think that kind of what Bell hooks is after here now or all kinds of aspects to her theory of low and she's written an entire book on it.

So I'm not going to capture all of the new watch here but that's what I get out of it. She writes without an ethic of love shaping, the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations. We are often seduced in one way or the other into continued allegiance to systems of domination, imperialism sexism, racism classes, all of these.

This is my interpretation. Now, all of these hump their origin in some way in sphere or self-doubt Michael more than the filmmaker in his film about guns. Says that, you know, they the the desire to have guns in Americans as I society is based on fear and racism is based on fear of black people rising up and you know getting the back for their years of oppression.

I think he may have a point to that. The main thing here is that it's a fear. It's a self-doubt, you know, there's lots of discussion about how say, sexism is a way to make up for your own perceived deficiencies, by oppressing, people of the other gender. There's something to that, but I'm not again.

Not gonna draw sweeping theory here because that would be absurd. All of these show up in their different ways in their very different ways. In every individual person, there's no one logic that shapes all of that. But the point here is, if you can set that part of yourself aside and then when you're in a relation of teaching relation at caring relation, a speaking on a podium relation, whatever, actually fully give yourself give of yourself to the other which I've characterized this.

Love your audience. Then that's when you see the fullest instance instantiation of an ethics of care and I think there's something to that. I certainly think you can't be good at whatever it is that you're doing without leaving the self out of it. You know. I'm not goes back to ancient tenets of Buddhism and and, and other philosophies, that preach a sort of selflessness.

And it's not selflessness in the sense of, you know, my you know, I have no value, my thoughts have no meaning, it's such, it's the opposite of that. It's that I have so much to give to the world that it doesn't make sense for me to withhold any of that because I'm afraid of how the world might perceive me.

And that's the problem with oppression and repression and injustice, is that we create these conditions where people are genuinely afraid of how the rest of the world will see them, you know, and imagine that a black person singing, you know. Okay. Bad example. But you know what I mean, right.

If you have that kind of ethos, then that person is going to be afraid to fully give themselves over to think to singing because they're afraid that there might be some reply or reprisal for that. So you need to take that into account and then your relation with that person, allow them or enable them to participate as fully and completely as possible with without these fears.

A lot of the time this comes up in a discussion of the safety of the environment. And, of course, people take safety and think about it asking, oh, being free from any sort of possible harm. And I don't really take safety is meaning that I take safety as meaning an environment where the other person can express themselves and give them themselves as fully as possible.

With out being constrained by their feelings, or apprehensions of harm, or reprisal or injustice or any of that. I think that's why a philosophy of free speech works. It's not because of the inherit, right? Of the person to speak. It's because it's just a better way to address inequalities, and oppression, and to help every member of society contribute to the fullest extent possible.

And if you understand it that way, then when we get into negotiations about what free speech actually is, we're working from a completely different basis when not so much based on some undefined concept of individual freedom. That is some sort of ethical universal that we all must subscribe to but very practical concrete discussions of, why is this person afraid?

What is presenting this person from speaking? How do we enable them to most fully express themselves in a way that is comfortable for them? And for the rest of society. Totally different thing and they're danger. This is the danger of the person experienced by the person whose oppressed, right?

And that's what we want to focus on when we're in a relationship of care and especially in a pedagogy of care again, love your students right when we talk about loving our students, the same voices usually talk about exercising caution, they want us about the dangers of getting too close, right?

But that's to misinterpret it, that goes back to that original discussion. Way back at the beginning of this presentation on care about the need for doctors to be objective and not emotionally involved with their patients. Because, you know, you get too close but you want to get close because you want to be able to get to the point where you're able to understand, and indeed even feel the sense of apprehension that they might have.

And this is especially the case for vulnerable people. It's certainly in hospitals, but also in schools and in social situations generally which is why we read. When we teach with love, we are better able to respond to the unique concerns of individual students. While simultaneously integrating those of the classroom community, it's not about love.

As, you know, romantic love. It's love as this desire and capacity, to give of ourselves as fully of as possible to whatever it is that we're doing in order to provide not just care but care or entertainment or knowledge and and you know getting past that element of fear and having somebody help me get past that element of fear is probably one of the most valuable things in the world.

Certainly one of the most valuable things you can do for someone and that's why it's so essential in a health care scenario where the apprehensions aren't just apprehensions, there are real physical dangers that people are facing, they're in a very vulnerable spot because they're injured, they're sick, you know, the all kinds of things are actually going wrong and they need to be, you know, not just treated medically but treated from the perspective that you know, they can express for themselves.

What would count as being healed or cured or cared for or whatever? You know, this is kind of reflected in a pedagogy of care and and we see it in Mahabali here. Sometimes she being begins her paper, the most valuable thing we can offer our students, is genuine care for them.

They're well-being, they're happiness, not just their grades, not just their learning, but their whole selves and I think that is true. We're not involved in the process of teaching, in order to produce some kind of standardized output like a grade or even an employment opportunity, or even a competency, the educational relation, even a many to one education relation, which, which she's talking about here, in the context of MOOCs still involves that.

No, my capacity to interact with every individual. And of course, of a thousand students is limited nonetheless. You know, from the perspective of love your students, I can still participate in that course, but giving is fully and completely as possible without holding back. And more importantly, I can create the environment in which they can do the same and if they can do this same, then a lot of the questions about mass go away and they go away because now they don't need me in particular to interact with.

They can interact with each other. They can, you know, they indeed take the same role that I do in a course where their projecting and giving of themselves is fully as possible and then that lands where it may and those interactions with other individuals happen where they may and there isn't this position of it's between one person, the instructor who must interact in the village with every other person rather you have this environment where everybody interacts with everybody.

And so we can all participate in this dialogue and discussion and learning experience. But this doesn't happen. Automatically Bali writes. If you want students to share of themselves to make themselves vulnerable, you need to start with yourself as Bell, hooks suggests. And I would read that. Basically, as you model this behavior, you model this attitude that you have where you are responding with love right.

And, you know, consider myself now in this situation, there are all kinds of reasons why I could doubt myself and not actually present this video, but giving into them would be a mistake because then I'm not modeling the sort of participation, a engagement, and learning, and interaction and experience.

I would like to see on the part of the people taking, the course, no matter. Whether there's one person or a thousand people, right? So it's on me to share with love and then hope that spreads and that becomes so learning experience for everyone in the course and perhaps that's a good place to begin to finish on, is to go back to Paolo Friary and others who talk to about pedagogy not just, as passing on knowledge, not just as on building skills but actually helping people build for themselves, a better place for themselves in their community.

Recognizing the places, where in justice and oppression, and disadvantage and vulnerability, may occur, and creating mechanisms and solutions to respond to them bail hooks again in the last 20 years. And now this is, you know, 30 years ago she's writing in the last 20 years educators who have dared to study and learn new ways of thinking and learning.

So that the work we do does not reinforce systems of domination of imperialism racism, sexism or class elitism have created, a pedagogy of hope addressing these in John in justices and vulnerabilities. In making them the starting point in the dialogue So that you can as quickly as possible. Begin to exchange, your thoughts, your ideas, your values freely and openly without fear without reservation.

That's where learning begins. That's where an ethics of care begins. So we come back after a long discussion, very long discussion with the questions that we asked at the beginning. How can neurons care is carrying driven by evolution, is this cultural evolution or biological evolution? There's it dependent on rules and rationalities.

Does it require attachment? And we can see that there weren't any particular answers to these questions because maybe these are not necessarily the right questions because there they're asking for something like a scientific theory in response and that's not really how it happens. You know, there is evolution, maybe certainly there's trial and error and adaption adaptation and change and all the hallmarks of evolution.

Some of it is cultural some of it is by a logical perhaps carrying is innate but for our purposes, what matters most is that part of it which is not a mate and which requires valuing development bringing forth, etc. Certainly from the perspective of analytics and artificial intelligence, I can tell you right off the bat that caring in a physical device, not in need.

And if we want machines, that care, we would have to design an internal and I think we want to design it into them. But when we ask what that means, we don't want to give quite the same answer because we don't want machines to operate without fear. Although, you know real sense machines do operate without fear.

So maybe that's the problem when we want them to operate in a way that respects our position, that respects the particularity of our position and especially conditions where we may be vulnerable and responds, according to our expressed needs. And not by some predefined algorithmically defined interpretation of what. I and everybody else must actually need.

We don't want our machines to be colonial. We we don't want our machines to to adopt this position that we know better. Can we instantiate that in a machine? Well, how do we instantiate that in people? That's what this talk, this particular video was about, right? How can we get a person whose made up of neurons to care?

Well, we went through semantic condition autonomy, openness interactivity and diversity. And we looked as you know, ways in which sleep, philosophy of care, addresses, those. We looked at the mechanisms modeling demonstrate, practice and reflect and look at how the ethics of care discusses those and something like that is going to be an approach that can describe how we can in individual circumstances.

Lead them to be in a position where they can care, but what does it mean to care? Well, go back to bell hooks. It means to love, but what does it mean to love to be able to give yourself as fully? And as completely as possible to the task at hand, for the benefit of whoever it is that you're working with that, doesn't mean becoming or servant or slave.

It just means completely and totally offering your capacities in that particular situation, that particular environment. Now, that's sounds like a sweeping theory, but in those broad generalizations are the exceptions that make this the rule, right? We know that this looks different every time and in every place that we practice it, they need to be individuals are different and specific and context dependent.

The needs of the, or the capacities, the abilities, and the needs of the person providing the care. Are similarly, individual and specific and context dependent, especially from the perspective of how the rest of the community regards them, enables them, treats them, or oppresses them All of these factors matter.

So if we look at that, from that perspective, we begin to see how we can generate in our society, and ethics of care. And part of my contention. In this course is that if we want and ethics of analytics and AI, we're going to need to do something similar.

We can't come up with general rules or principles that just simply ignore the position any individual is in or any audience in and treat them as older all the same, not going to work. And we want to encourage the best in both ourselves. And in our machines, the most complete expression of what their capabilities are in the service of helping the other.

That's a hard. That's a I was gonna say that's a hard. So but I don't think it's a hard sell but it's a hard proposition. It's a hard time. It's hard to comprehend, how we could do that. But again, the purpose of this course is only partially say, okay, here's how we do that.

Really, we're not going to solve that problem here, but it's to address the presumption that we could have some kind of overarching plan or pedagogy, whether it be a critical pedagogy, or whether it be something else that basically imposes a structure or framework over us. And says, this is how we should view the world doesn't work that way.

And, you know, even the practice of picking one of these, and using it as a lens and interpreting the world in that way, it doesn't work that way. Anytime you use a lens, you're distorting whatever. The actual situation is in reality. And what you want to do is get as close as you can without distorting it.

I can go on, but I won't go on that. This video I want to talk a little bit before we wrap up the ethics of care on how we can pull back a bit and and think about a broader way of understanding it and comprehending it so that we can talk not just about caring professions but about the broader range of how we learn and how we promote these kind of relationships in general.

So that would be a discussion of sentiments that's the next video. And that's the one that will wrap up this module on the ethics of care. So, thank you. I'm Stephen Downs. I hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you again.

Hmm.

Force:yes