Click here to read Part III. Relationships
In between the student-teacher relationship (STR) is “a multiplicity of betweens” (p. 207) in which each contributes by taking interest in other. So what is interest?
interest: mid-15c., “legal claim or right; a concern; a benefit, advantage, a being concerned or affected (advantageously),” from Old French interest “damage, loss, harm” (Modern French intérêt), from noun use of Latin interest “it is of importance, it makes a difference,” third person singular present of interresse “to concern, make a difference, be of importance,” literally “to be between,” from inter “between” (see inter-) + esse “to be” (from PIE root *es- “to be”)
For each person whose interest is to be in between – interresse – with another, that person potentially influences and contributes to the other: each/other. With shared trust and mutual intention, such interest describes a healthy STR, which grows with the passing of time.
Irwin’s analogy is apt, by which education, for Aoki, is inherently bilingual, as it were, occupying “spaces between [a mother-tongue] and additional languages” (p. 41) – between what is known and what is new. Between now and the-yet-to-come, what is new becomes what is known, and so it goes,[1] this course to run, this ambiguity in which to dwell with others, presently, to make a difference for the meantime – to grapple and grow in the interest of each/other.
Curricular interest has its own particular culture and way of being, Irwin continues, sometimes uncomfortable, often challenging, not needfully intimidating. It resists the assimilation or dominance of either “language” and prefers to forge some composite: the outcome, as compared to ‘someone trained’, is ‘more than one educated’.
Moreover, what is known can inform what is new. According to Liu Baergen, the central theme in Aoki’s work is how “lived experiences often contributes [sic] to one’s inner attitudes” (p. 173). I agree and add, from Aoki himself, that we ought “to be mindful of how others help us to open ourselves to who we are…” because it is “others [who] help us in our own self-understanding” (p. 382), who help us to learn from what is known about ourselves something new. It is others with whom we share lived experiences, whose voices join in chorus with ours. Aoki’s claim, taken from Deleuze, seems unmistakable: “‘Every multiplicity grows in the middle’” (p. 205). We are nothing new without each/other.
Aoki describes IB in two ways. First, IB is an abstract ‘place’, a locus of activity, characterised by dialogue and tension. Imagine a furnace in which you and I forge my identity while, simultaneously, you and I forge your identity. In this concerted way, this locus of two coming together, we forge both our identities as well as a shared understanding: we help forge each/other, which I take as Aoki’s description of “belonging together” (p. 396). IB is “the many [as] a unity mediated by synthesis,” e.g. the IB dynamic occurring in between, where “what are related assumes priority over the notion of relation” (p. 396), e.g. a trusted teacher discerning a willing student’s needs.
Also to be found in between is a characterisation of the time spent together, where each step taken is that ‘place’ where we are ‘now’. This is Aoki’s second description: IB as a kind of bridge, characterized by mutuality and journeying, that we mount and cross together. This Aoki describes as “belonging together,” that moment-by-moment amalgamation as each step taken is felt and lived. Where we stood earlier we each might call the ground-of-who-I-am-and-what-I-understand-right-now, i.e. that was you and me then, with that ‘present’ understanding.
Where we alight from the bridge now, as it lands us on the other side, having crossed together, we might call the ground-of-who-I-am-and-what-you-have-helped-me-understand-thanks-to-having-crossed-together. But that’s much too long, so maybe let’s just call it our present ground. By the same turn, let’s call that earlier our prior ground – and “ground” because hey, we all have to stand somewhere… metaphors – like bridges – are only meant to go so far.
More to the point is the duration of time spent crossing the span of that bridge, as if to look back upon the experience and say, “Ah yes, how that was! – that time spent crossing the bridge together,” which might have been worst or best or, more likely, something in between. This is that sense of IB not as ‘place’ but as an experience of ‘places’, a remembrance of what it was like during some time spent together: what we thought, how we felt, how we nudged and provoked each other, how we reacted – all memories now, really – as well as anything we might have decided to take from the encounter – good or bad or otherwise. And as there’s surely more to add, let’s be wary of nostalgia… meanwhile, I think the point is clear. Dwelling in the IB space affords a kind of mediation, a negotiation between us that permits truth or knowledge or learning to be found somewhere along through the middle.
I’m reminded here, as elsewhere, of the wisdom of Dr. King: one more great thinker and teacher who called our attention to the locus in between. As we are all, he claimed, paradoxically yet beautifully this makes us one. We ought to pay heed.
[1] I have a reading and writing exercise for students in which we parse one sentence’s subject and object – respectively, what is known and what is new – as a way to comprehend or predict a sentence that follows. In that subsequent sentence, the previous object is the new subject, and what was new is now what is known. So the cycle rolls – a bit formulaic, or else novel, depending on your perspective. As we create cohesive paragraphs and essays, so we interact with each/other.
The Rhetorical WHY 