LESSONS OF LOVE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND TEACHER-STUDENT LOVE

摘要

From the beginning, philosophers as different as Plato and Paulo Freire have claimed that love plays an integral part in education and pedagogy. This role has been formulated in many ways: love has the power to inspire students to seek after knowledge, love can unite the teacher and student in the quest for knowledge, and the love of learning can even empower students to challenge knowledge thereby pushing its limits. Though love has long been viewed as a positive force in the teaching and learning processes, two recent phenomena have called the necessity of love into question, namely, teacher-student sexual scandal and the standardization movement. Each phenomenon highlights a different problematic associated with love: sexual scandal points to the vague line between love and sex, while the standardization of knowledge and increased reliance on standardized testing implicitly devalue love as being irreleyant and even damaging in its potential to bias the assessment of student work.