Engaging Bodhisattva Compassion in Pedagogical Aporias

• In Event: Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: Problematizing Pedagogy and Curriculum

Abstract

In teaching culturally and politically sensitive curriculum, educators who address controversial, critical, and difficult issues often encounter silence, resistance, or anger from students in the classrooms. At times when tension arises, it is impossible to teach the curriculum we plan to teach or exercise the pedagogy we plan to take. I see these difficulties are pedagogical aporias, a concept Derrida elegantly explicated. I suggest we need to transform our own minds and to look at and approach the pedagogical aporias with ethics informed by Buddhism. Bodhisattva ethics nurtured by compassion and wisdom provides us both theoretical interpretations and practical guidance in developing our own ethical subjects.

Author

• Mei W. Hoyt, University of North Texas