Page 288 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Carita s cur ricul um and t e achin g -le ar ni n g
forcefully, it takes a personal commitment by educators to enliven
the importance of human relationships and caring as the epicenter of
what nursing actually means, as its first and necessary condition.
Such an approach applies also to our students so we can see their
“faces” and our “faces” can be seen by them, and we are seen to prac-
tice what we teach. This is not easy. As noted, it takes a certain aspira-
tion and inspiration, what is ultimately a metaphysical worldview that
recognizes and accommodates the tensions that will be met along the
way. For Levinas, a relation between the self and the other is always
asymmetrical, one “in which each side of the relation is ‘other’ for
the other side” (quoted in Joldersma 200:181; also see Chinnery 2001).
This applies to both educator-student and student-educator relations.
If we treat our relations with others merely as roles, there is a danger
of collapsing back into a universally objectivist mode of thinking in
which the educative relation has no face—this student, this lecturer,
this patient, this nurse, this doctor, but no face, no other, no unique
individual.
There is a profound irony here in that a full lecture theater is often
referred to as “a sea of faces” when in fact it is often the opposite, a
crowd of no faces in which “one lecture fits all,” just as one justice fits
all or one science fits all. This highlights the importance of authentic
dialogue in small-group interactions as part of a caring/Caritas curric-
ulum. But it also alerts us to the danger that even in small-group teach-
ing, the focus may be on what is to be learned and not on a deeper
exchange within the face-to-face, human-to-human encounter—an
exchange that is required if a more transformative learning experience
is to occur. Joldersma described it this way:
Thus, what is central in my role as a teacher to the student as other
is responsibility. I have an obligation more primary than any free-
dom. In fact it might not be too strong to argue that my singularity
as a teacher comes into existence through my exposure to the stu-
dent as other. Here the otherness of the student can be character-
ized as uniqueness, something that transcends my categorization.
The uniqueness of the student is actually a call to me for assum-
ing responsibility to that person. I am responsible to her [sic] pre-
cisely because s/he is irreplaceable in the pedagogical relationship,

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