Advanced search Subscribe to our newsletter and you'll continuously be informed about our new books, series and journals. You can customize this e-mail newsletter to your particular needs and interests. Newsletters include special discount codes. To subscribe or change existing preferences press the subscribe button	A Pedagogy of Becoming. MILLS, Jon (Ed.) Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2002, XI, 236 pp. Pb: 978-90-420-1507-4 / 90-420-1507-1 € 45 / US$ 61 Series: Value Inquiry Book Series 116 Philosophy of Education "the chapters achieve the stated goal of presenting teaching as a way to foster the holistic growth of students. The authors have credible backgrounds, largely in academic philosophy and psychology. Readers interested in educational philosophy, holistic education, or teaching in general will find this material thoughtful, readable, and in many cases classroom-tested. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above." CHOICE - Current reviews for academic libraries - January 2003 This book advocates a return to the spirit of the Greek notion of paideia, emphasizing a pedagogy of becoming. The authors offer a holistic approach to education that aspires toward the inclusion, promotion, and nurturance of virtue and valuation. Topics range from the purely conceptual to applied methodology. Several key issues and contemporary trends in education are addressed philosophically, including the values of wisdom, morality, compassion, empathy, interdependence, authenticity, and self-understanding. Contents: George David MILLER: Editorial Foreword Acknowledgements Jon MILLS: Introduction: Paideia Reconsidered I. PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ONE David A. JOPLING: Can Wisdom Be Taught? TWO Janusz A. POLANOWSKI: In Search of Moral Teaching THREE Frank GRUBA-McCALLISTER: Education Through Compassion: Cultivating Our Mystical Vocation II. ENACTMENTS AND APPLIED METHODOLOGY FOUR George David MILLER: Abolishing Educational Welfare: Redrawing the Lines of Interdependency Through Dialogue FIVE Jon MILLS: An Unorthodox Pedagogy: Fostering Empathy Through Provocation SIX Guy ALLEN: The “Good Enough” Teacher and the Authentic Student SEVEN Jeffrey TLUMAK: Teaching Through Discussion EIGHT Marc LUBIN: The Classroom Experience as a Laboratory for Self-Understanding NINE John LACHS and Shirley M. LACHS: Education in the Twenty-First Century About the Contributors Index ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS GUY ALLEN is Professor of Writing in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Toronto. He was the Coordinator of the Psychoanalytic Thought Program for several years and was awarded a national teaching honor for higher education in Canada. He is the managing editor of a small literary press for new writers, co-hosts a community radio program that broadcasts autobiographical narratives, and is the founder of the popular Totally Unknown Writers Festival in Toronto. He has numerous publications in teaching and pedagogy and is the editor of No More Masterpieces: Short Prose by New Writers. FRANK GRUBA-McCALLISTER is Professor and Associate Dean of the Illinois School of Professional Psychology-Chicago. He specializes in existential and phenomenological psychology, health psychology, and the psychology of spirituality. He has contributed several publications to the professional literature on these topics and has been the recipient of multiple awards for teaching excellence at the Illinois School. DAVID A. JOPLING is Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University. He was a Mellon Fellow in psychology at Emory University, has authored numerous articles in Continental philosophy and philosophical psychology, and is the author of Self-Knowledge and the Self. He is currently a consultant and representative for the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training. JOHN LACHS is Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is one of the leading interpreters of the American philosophical tradition and has received numerous awards for teaching excellence and the advancement of scholarship, including the Herbert Schneider Award for Lifetime Contributions to American Philosophy. His recent books include, In Love with Life, The Cost of Comfort, Thinking in the Ruins, and The Relevance of Philosophy to Life. SHIRLEY M. LACHS is a classicist and has taught Latin for many years. She writes with her husband on issues of education and is the co-editor of George Santayana, Physical Order and Moral Liberty. MARC LUBIN is Professor and Dean of the Illinois School of Professional Psychology-Chicago. He is a Diplomate on the American Board of Admin-istrative Psychology and currently teaches and supervises graduate students in clinical psychology. He has been a consultant to child-care teachers and social workers and was a developmental teacher of disturbed children at the University of Chicago Orthogenic School. He has several publications on graduate teaching in psychology, specializes in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and maintains a private practice in psychotherapy in Chicago. GEORGE DAVID MILLER is Professor of Philosophy, Graduate Director, and Director of the Scholars Program at Lewis University. He is the recipient of several awards for teaching excellence including the Carnegie Illinois Professor of the Year. He specializes in the philosophy of education, serves as Associate Editor of the Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS), and is the author of several books, including Negotiating Toward Truth, On Ethics and Values, and An Idiosyncratic Ethics. JON MILLS is a psychologist and a philosopher. He received his Psy.D. in clinical psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology, Chicago, his Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and was a Fulbright scholar of philosophy at the University of Toronto and York University. He is currently Internship Coordinator and Clinical Supervisor in the Mental Health Program at Lakeridge Health Corporation Oshawa, an Associate with the Research Institute at Lakeridge Health, and a member of the Core Faculty at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Toronto. He serves as Associate Editor of the Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS), has numerous publications in philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, and education, and is co-author of The Ontology of Prejudice. He maintains a private practice in Ajax, Ontario. JANUSZ A. POLANOWSKI is a full-time faculty member in the Arts and Humanities Department at Nashville Technical Institute and teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University where he is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy. He specializes in process philosophy and ethics and is the co-author of The Ontology of Prejudice. JEFFREY TLUMAK is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He was Director of Vanderbilt’s Graduate Program for several years, founding editor of the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, member of the APA’s Committee on Teaching, and recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teacher Award at Vanderbilt. He also serves as an advisor for the university’s Center for Teaching. He has published numerous contributions on modern philosophy and epistemology and authored an educational audiotape script, Descartes, Bacon, and the Rise of Modern Philosophy. The distinct voices in this volume are the voices of the new century. They confront scientism and reduction, and in both oblique and explicit terms return to paideia—excellence, how it is acquired and transmitted. This theme could not be more appropriate for a shrinking world and the wisdom and virtue needed to live together in such a world. George David Miller From the Editorial Foreword EXCERPT (note: "text only", the lay-out of the page is not reproduced) Five AN UNORTHODOX PEDAGOGY: FOSTERING EMPATHY THROUGH PROVOCATION Jon Mills Empathy and provocation are often viewed in bipolar opposition to one another: empathy—an attunement to the psychic state of the other, provocation—a solicitation of anger. While empathy is typically associated with the humanistic comportment of care, provocation is maligned as aggressive and relegated to the realm of the negative. Empathy and provocation are underappreciated aspects of education and are together seldom practiced in the classroom. Within general education, the methodological employment of empathy and provocation are treated gingerly. Empathy requires a personal commitment to understand the inner reality of the student, which sometimes entails a painful foray into the throes of human consciousness—a commitment few teachers are prepared to undertake. While empathy is typically seen as a virtuous activity, it is rarely taught within school: there are no mandatory classes on how to listen, perceive, and understand the inner world of others—this is often left to life experiences and the development of character. Provocation, on the other hand, is avoided like the plague. It connotes aggression and conflict, and entails an encroachment on the inner reality of the student, a confrontation that transgresses the objective guise of instruction while entering the subjective ground of individuality. Many teachers often concede that they are minimally interested in knowing about the personal attributes of their students let alone the intimate experiences that constitute their lives, for the teacher-student relationship would shift from the professional to the private. However, provocation, like empathy, also has its positive valences, particularly when utilized to engender values. What pedagogical role does empathy and provocation have in the active classroom experience? Is there a positive significance to the negative that provocation affords, one that may serve as a catalyst for empathy? In this chapter I wish to make a case for the use of provocation in the service of empathy which further serves a purpose for general education. I will argue that when incorpor-ated within pedagogical technique, provocation may be utilized as a means to cultivate empathy within students as well as express empathy itself. As a critical attempt to explore the nature of value, empathic provocation may provide an alternative and unorthodox approach to values education that may be seen as the expression of care. But before we delve into the nuances of a provocative ped-agogy, we must first look closely at the nature of empathy in order to understand its role in an instructional methodology as well as its relation to provocation. 1. The Topography of Empathy Empathy is a concept used to refer to myriad experiences ranging from the ethical and aesthetic to the transcendental. Generally considered an ally of humanism, empathy is often discussed in mental health fields as a therapeutic technique. While given emphasis by phenomenological psychologists as a “very special way of being with another person,” empathy is described by Freud as “the process . . . which plays the largest part in our understanding of what is inherently foreign to our ego in other people.” Viewed as a process rather than merely a state one is in, empathy can be a powerful means for understanding the inner being of another. In everyday usage, the term has acquired a number of different meanings that imply attunement with the emotional or feeling states of another often associated with acts of sympathy or kindness. Sympathy is distinguished from empathy insofar as sympathy involves the capacity to enter into and participate in the shared feelings of the other (which is often sorrow or suffering), while empathy involves an act of insightful projection into another’s experience without necessarily having to feel that same experience. Clearly, empathy, sympathy, and insight can overlap, yet empathy implies a degree of subjective space within the intersubjective engagement of another distinct from his or her affective reality while still remaining positioned alongside it. In the words of Carl Rogers, “being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person.” This involves “entering the private perceptual world of the other . . . [and] being sensitive, moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person.” From this account, empathy almost requires a subjective merger through imagination and identificatory perception of what it would be like to experience the world from the other’s perspective. Within many clinical accounts of empathy, the emphasis falls on being attuned with the affective processes of others. Helene Deutsch provides us with an initial understanding of empathy: “The affective psychic content of the patient . . . becomes transmuted into an inner experience of the analyst, and is recognized as belonging to the patient (i.e., to the external world) only in the course of intellectual work.” She further concludes that empathy involves the dialectical oscillation between close emotional harmony with the patient’s inner life and a distant objectivity afforded by intellectual evaluation. Following Freud’s claim that a “path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy,” Deutsch believes that empathy is initiated by a temporary ident-ification with the other. Whether or not this involves a moment of merger with the other accompanied by a simultaneous sense of separateness, she does not say. Yet on some level, identification (whether transient or partial) is a key ingredient in the capacity to relate to and understand the inner processes and experiences of another person. Within psychoanalytic self psychology, Kohut describes empathy as “vicarious introspection” and designates it as the primary method for comprehending the inner reality of another. “Empathy is a mode of cognition which is specifically attuned to the perception of complex psychological configurations.” Through the recognition of complex psychological processes, empathic observation involves an attunement to others’ inner experiences, and “when they say what they think or feel, [one] imagines their inner experience even though it is not open to direct observation.” For Kohut, empathy is a method of observation for collecting psychological data as well as a technique that becomes employed within the clinical encounter to seek out hidden and unavailable painful, archaic, and conflicted aspects of development. The operational mode of observation may also be considered to be an important feature of empathy that extends beyond the therapy situation. Combined with a caring comportment, empathic observation can serve as a foundation for a responsive, validating, and understanding posture that one may assume toward others at large. There are many levels of empathy that may involve attending to a complex mélange of experiences ranging from mere conceptual understanding and affirmation of the other’s inner reality to affective and emotionally charged thoughts and inner conflicts that are unconsciously derived. Schafer notes that empathic appreciation of another’s mental world goes beyond the simple emphasis on shared feelings to include an understanding of the individual’s “organization of desires, feelings, thoughts, defenses, controls, superego pressures, capacities, self-representations, and representations of real and fantasied personal relationships.” While this is an objective of therapy and thereby performed by an `arcane and highly trained groups of professionals, empathy of this sort may be said to be beyond the task of teacher-student instruction. Yet empathic connections to students’ conscious internal states and experiences are viable goals of teacher education that happen on a daily basis. Given the abstruse nature of empathy hitherto presented, the very issue of its utility and exactitude in education needs to be further explored.	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