If, as many allege, we are the stories that we tell, then these stories might well be seen as constituting a fundamental piece of the self. But stories need to be heard, just as the self requires witnesses. In the lives of most people, counselors and teachers, along with parents, represent the most significant witnesses in our lives and hence to…

A reflection is offered on what certain scholars call the variousness of students and teachers of the sort that psychologists often miss. A case is made for the need to separate one's self from the objects one studies as one attempts to assess students and modes of learning, the variations in historical eras and their influence on the shaping of…

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas suggested that the most ethical act possible is the discovery that one has assumed responsibility for the other. In fact it is the other that makes possible the genuine exploration of the self, an act dominating the adolescent era of development. Although rarely appearing in educational literature, Levinas has…

This article offers yet another look at the challenge of teaching, in this case through the eyes of writers like John Passmore, Michael Novak, and Emmanuel Levinas. It is an attempt to combine the fundamental qualities of good teaching as set forth by Passmore, with the notion of "caritas", literally meaning willing the good of the other, and the…

In this article, the author reflects on Bert Cohler's essay "Desire, Teaching and Learning" and relates it to his teacher, Miss Anna Freud's story. The author asks whether it is possible that what one sees and hears, and encounters as teacher is only partially what is really out there in one's classroom and in the heads of one's students and…