The Monsters of Childhood and Teachers' Obligations to Respond

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Emotion and Discipline Within "Civil" State Discourse

Abstract

Children in schools are afflicted by issues of poverty, racism, mental health, and more. These are the monsters of childhood to which teachers are obligated to respond. Yet, the education system, which has long attempted to know the “Other”, expects teachers to learn about children (assess and categorize) in order to “teach” them (transmit and fix). This violence of turning “Otherness” into sameness, minimizes spaces for teachers’ judgements and relationships. This paper, enlisting Levinasian insights of ethical possibility and interviews with teachers, will elucidate teachers’ ethical engagements with children that reflect qualities of: reconceptualized understandings of children, hospitality, vulnerability and hope; provide a greater appreciation of what it means to work justly on behalf of vulnerable children.

Author

• Melanie D. Janzen, University of Manitoba