Introduction
When, I first planned this book, I thought that democratic caring would be the highlight of this book, considering that my intellectual work deals with democratic education. My concern is always what other forms caring could assume if democratic caring already integrates multiple notions of caring, as discussed throughout this book. Only when I read Michael Slote’s work on caring did I realise that democratic caring might not be an overarching enough term for notions of care that deal with virtues of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation – aspects of educational inquiry that feature prominently in my writings on educational justice. Thus, in this chapter, I draw on the seminal work of Michael Slote (2007) to elucidate a notion of empathic caring. I argue that such a notion of caring is commensurate with an enactment of respect and dignity towards others. Likewise, I show how respect and dignity as manifestations of empathic care could influence pedagogical encounters positively. Then, I look at the notion of justice and how empathic care could enhance just pedagogical relationships through an emphasis on constraining injurious speech.
First, however, I narrate an encounter with my daughter, Sihan, a medical doctor working as a registrar dermatologist at a local public hospital. When she heard that I am writing a book on caring in education, she was somewhat surprised because she thought that the medical profession is about the only authentic profession that deals justifiably with the notion of caring for patients. When I asked her about the care for medical practitioners, she was somewhat bemused again because as she asserted, her work involves providing care to those in need. Seemingly oblivious of the fact that care-givers can also be care recipients, and that care is not a practice strictly confined to the medical profession, she raised an important aspect of what seems to be wrong with understandings of care. That is, care-givers are the only authentic carers and people who actually deal with real issues of care. It is at this juncture that she raised the point that educators have sympathy for students, but they do not actually care for them. In relation to Slote’s (2007) distinction between empathy and sympathy, I wanted to examine whether caring is inapplicable to education and in particular pedagogical encounters.
Empathy or Sympathy?
On the one hand, a person has empathy for someone else if such a person comes to feel the other person’s pain. In education, a teacher feels the pain of a student when the student does not defend his or her thesis convincingly enough under conditions of intense scrutiny. Perhaps the teacher remembers his or her own pain of not doing too well in an oral examination and thus relates to the pain the student undergoes, as the behaviour of the student clearly arouses the teacher’s empathy. On the other hand, a teacher has sympathy for a student who performs poorly in an examination without being him- or herself aroused by the feelings of disappointment experienced by the student. Following Slote (2007: 37–38), Person A only knows the pain of Person B if the latter expresses, exhibits or reflects the pain which he or she internalises. As pronounced by Slote (2007: 38), ‘[s]o an ethics of empathic caring can say that institutions and laws, as well as social customs and practices, are just if they reflect empathically caring’.Thus empathy involves having the feelings of another (involuntarily) aroused in ourselves, as when we see another person in pain. It is as if their pain invades us, and Hume speaks, in this connection, of the contagion between what one person feels and what another comes to feel. However, we can also feel sorry for, bad for, the person who is in pain and positively wish them well. This amounts, as we say, to sympathy for them, and it can happen even if we aren’t feeling their pain.
When university teachers show empathic care for their students, they accept students’ autonomy to criticise them and, equally, students should be held answerable for making unjustifiable claims. In this way, empathic caring manifests because respect allows participants to engage with ‘mutual critical reflection’ (Fay, 1996: 240) in pedagogical encounters. This brings me to a discussion of empathic caring in relation to just action. To assume that university teachers cannot really care and that empathic caring is applicable to only the medical profession is to be remiss of what it means to engage respectfully – that is, caringly within an encounter.Respect demands that we hold others to the intellectual and moral standards we apply to our friends and ourselves. Excusing others from demands of intellectual rigor and honesty or moral sensitivity and wisdom on the grounds that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion no matter how ill-informed or ungrounded, or – worse – on the grounds that others need not or cannot live up to these demands, is to treat them with contempt. We honor others by challenging them when we think they are wrong, and by thoughtfully taking their criticisms of us.
Empathic Caring and Justice
In the same way empathic caring involves recognising the pain or vulnerability of someone else, and respecting the autonomy of persons, so an ethic of empathic caring is linked to justice. According to Slote (2007: 167–168), social institutions , practices and customs, as well as political legislation, ‘are just if they reflect empathically caring motivation on the part of (enough of) those responsible for originating and maintaining them’. Considering that religious intolerance and persecution, patriarchal social attitudes, and women who do a disproportionate amount of housework, are ways that do not embody empathic caring and, therefore, are unjust (Slote, 2007: 169–171). Similarly, if civil citizens of one country do not show concern for immigrants living outside their own country, they can be said to lack empathic caring.
When teachers and students undermine one another within pedagogical encounters by not allowing each another to speak and justify their points of view, say on this matter or that, they could be said to be lacking empathic caring. Another pertinent example in point is a university curriculum that seems to turn a blind eye to developments about intolerance and injustice pertaining to marginalised peoples. I specifically think of the harassment and intimidation several religious persons have to endure on account of the differences they exhibit in the public domain. If university curricula fail to respond to such pertinent developments in communities, it would not be unfair to associate such curricula with lacking empathic care. The upshot of the afore-mentioned argument is that exercising empathic caring becomes a struggle against religious and racial bigotry, gender oppression and cultural imperialism – in the sense that a specific cultural understanding is considered by some as more superior than that of another community. As Hill (2000: 69) asserts, any person ought to be considered worthy of respect even if such person exhibits value differences of which others may disapprove. Even those blamed for perpetrating religious bigotry in the example mentioned above should be respected as persons, which at least would leave open the door for reconciliation – a matter of practising empathic care. Showing excessive dislike and hatred towards people would undermine the possibility of reconciliation among contending parties. Put differently, empathic care could enhance reconciliation on the basis that without care, human dignity would be undermined and reconciliation might be unlikely. If one does not show empathic care towards others on account of their human dignity it is very unlikely that such persons would in any case be respected and, by implication, co-existing together as humans would be difficult as well.
This brings me to a brief discussion of how empathic care can be cultivated in a university class. Firstly, university curricula should reflect narratives of cultural difference of diverse peoples, say on the African continent. In this way, pedagogical opportunities would be created for students to engage critically with difference and perhaps controversial issues that emanate from race, gender, class and religious differences. Through empathic care, students can learn to appreciate values of others, perhaps unknown to them. Secondly, showing empathic care requires that teachers engage with students about care and justice in relation to trust – that is, through pedagogical intimacy, students and teachers can be afforded opportunities to ‘look into each other’s eyes and squeeze each other’s hands’ (Greene, 1994: 25). Thirdly, teachers should initiate students into discussions about constraining injurious speech. That is, students should learn not to use speech to affront other students, although such a constraint does not imply that one has to abandon belligerent discussions with them. Empathic care can reasonably be practised when students learn to constrain harmful speech. In other words, free articulation of thoughts should not be, as Amy Gutmann (2003: 200) puts it, ‘an unconstrained licence to discriminate’.
However, my potential critic might legitimately assert that constraining freedom of speech under the guise of practicing empathic care – even if such speech were to be injurious – is tantamount to abruptly curtailing educative practices. Elsewhere (Davids & Waghid, 2019) we have developed the argument that provocative speech cannot be dismissed on account that speech requires of one to engage with thought in any case. In other words, it seems more plausible to reconfigure speech rather than just dismissing it, for the reason that change can only happen when people engage with one another’s opposing and at times belligerent views. Yet, in reconfiguring speech, one explicitly recognises the need to counteract harmful and discriminatory speech. For instance, it does not seem convincing merely to expel academics and students from institutions of higher learning when they hold controversial views about societal matters. The point is, they cannot be wished away on the grounds that their views are incommensurate with the dominant views that prevail. Such controversial views, if not dealt with through engagement and rebuttal, will permeate society and might resurface again some other time because the views have not been given sufficient attention. Equally, others might assert that discriminatory and provocative speech does not warrant engagement. Rather, I would posit that engaging with such speech might be a better option in the sense that counter-speech is invariably a more tenable way of dealing with unjust speech than leaving such provocative speech unexamined.
Summary
In this chapter, I have given an account of empathic caring. Such a form of caring manifests in pedagogical encounters in ways teachers and students treat one another with dignity and respect. In addition, I have shown how recognising the pain of others through empathic care can most appropriately be addressed through an understanding of justice when a person constrains him- or herself in speech in pedagogical encounters with others in order to build pedagogical intimacy and trust within university classes.