Towards a Philosophy of Caring in Higher Education by Yusef Waghid

Author:Yusef Waghid
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030039615
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

This brings me to a discussion of some of the implications of cosmopolitan caring for pedagogical encounters. Firstly, cosmopolitan carers aspire to work together, which means that teachers and students engage in pedagogical encounters because of a commitment to work together. This implies that both see the need to be influenced by one another’s thoughts. In a way, their caring for one another works in a supportive way as they recognise that they can learn from one another – that is, they appreciate ‘what it means to dwell educationally’ (Hansen, 2011: 117). Many of the African students in my philosophy class are in agreement that an initiation into a discourse of African philosophy of education requires of students and me to be open to learning from and with one another. It is not sufficient that I explicate some of the views of prominent African thinkers on education. Rather, students recognise their autonomy to act willingly in the pursuit of conjuring up ideas and elucidations of such a philosophy of education. Secondly, considering that a core value of cosmopolitan caring is to show ‘a reflective openness to the new and reflective loyalty to the known’ (Hansen, 2011: 113), pedagogical encounters would be conceived as pedagogical openings for both teachers and students. In other words, in such encounters, there would always arise the possibility to see new imaginings. Teachers and students would, in the words of Hansen (2011: 118), ‘constitute an already existing cosmopolitan community … [with] an abiding disposition to share ideas, methods, and philosophies across any number of cultural markers’. Here, I specifically think of a notion of an African philosophy of education that aims to examine major problems on the continent of Africa, and then to examine the implications of such an analysis for higher education in particular. The point is, such a view of philosophy of education could not have emanated from my own thoughts without also having considered the views articulated by my students. Again, in reference to a massive open online course (MOOC) on Teaching for Change, in which we examine at length in the book Rupturing African philosophy of teaching and learning : Ubuntu justice and education (Waghid, Waghid, & Waghid, 2018), a notion of African philosophy of education as an explication of major problems with the aim to examine educational implications for higher learning, would not have been possible without the analytical and at times descriptive contributions of my students.

Thirdly, cosmopolitan caring stimulates teachers to recognise the enormous cognitive powers of students and, without coercing students to do things, they nominate themselves as change agents ‘while not ignoring the genuine service that meaningful [teacher] support can provide them [students]’ (Hansen, 2011: 124). My interest is in the cosmopolitan concern of becoming a change agent. When teachers and students commit themselves to becoming change agents they are at once concerned about the importance of the curriculum to affect their education. The point is, teachers and students who are cosmopolitan carers set out for themselves to cultivate a world that is just and in which human relations are nurtured for the betterment of all.

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