INTRODUCTION

The aim of this paper is to draw out ethical insights and implications from

Levinas’s ethics which may inform and shape modern pedagogy towards an ethical

teaching practice (teaching practice, assessment, educational policies, teaching

relationship). Due to the current ethical problems related to teaching there is an important

need to discuss its moral/ethical dimension. Thus, this research paper is a response and

a contribution to such endeavor. By drawing insights from the ethical philosophy of

Emmanuel Levinas, teachers may consider shifting their approach and relationship with

their students.

For instance, the ethical problem of stereotyping, discrimination, categorization

(which includes labeling and racism) on the part of teachers and educators in relation to

their students pose serious ethical problems that may lead to a violent relation between

the teacher and the student. Racism for instance is a form of robbing the Other of his

uniqueness and alterity. Recently, a Maryland student punched a teacher over racial and

insensitive comments.1 According to Lyn Newton, “Stereotyping students by their race

and background could be a concern.”2 In America, accusations of racism in schools is

prevalent.3 According to Resmovits, one of the serious consequences of such ethical issue

is the lowering of the academic performance of minority students and it puts them at

1 Tracee Wilkins “Witnesses: Prince George's County Teacher Punched by Student Over Racially
Insensitive Comment,” [Article on-line]; http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Prince-Georges-
County-Teacher-Punched-by-Student-290589731.html (accessed 5 March 2015).
2 Lyn Newton, “Do Teachers Stereotype Students?” [Article on-line];
http://www.families.com/blog/do-teachers-stereotype-students (accessed 5 March 2015).
3 In September of 2014 a Filipina teacher in San Bernardino in California was accused of racist slur

in the classroom. This incident has created tensions and word wars in social networks between those who
defend and accuse her. Balitang America, “Pinay teacher accused of racist slur in classroom,” [Article on-
line]; http://www.balitangamerica.tv/pinay-teacher-accused-of-racist-slur-in-classroom/ (accessed 5 March
2015).
greater risk of dropping out of school.4 Though racism is not a major concern in

Philippine education, women discrimination on the other hand is a concern. Commission

on Higher Education chairperson Patricia Licuanan claimed that females are still

discriminated in Philippine schools. She remarked:

We are also warned not to be lulled into complacency by simple access

statistics, because gender sensitivity and access to gender-fair education
are also issues, surfacing in situations where girls and young women suffer
more subtle discrimination in school, such as sexual harassment and
violence against women and girls.5

A student may acquire fear or shame due to his/her experience of discrimination

and this may affect the student’s performance.

Another problem (similar/related) is the act of labeling/stereotyping done by some

teachers. Some teachers would often times label a particular class as underperforming or

a particular student as an underachiever, lazy, etc. This results not only to serious ethical

implications to the teaching relationship but also to the learning outcome as well. Peter

Mortimore claims that “there is a considerable evidence that teachers' beliefs and

expectations have a crucial effect on the learning outcomes of their pupils.” 6 This is

supported by Ornstein who claimed that when teachers “label” and classify students as

‘disturbed’ or ‘low-performing’ these students tend to misbehave and thus greatly affects

the relationship and the learning process.7 When teachers fail to respect the uniqueness

4 Joy Resmovits, “American Schools Are STILL Racist, Government Report Finds,” [Article on-line];
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/21/schools-discrimination_n_5002954.html, (accessed 5 March
2015).
5 Paterno Esmaquel II, “Females still discriminated against in PHL schools — CHED chair,” [Article

On-line]; http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/214630/news/nation/females-still-discriminated-
against-in-phl-schools-ched-chair (accessed 7 March 2015).
6 Peter Mortimore, Understanding Pedagogy and its Impact on Learning (London: Chapman, 1999), 80.

Cited hereafter as Mortimore, Understanding Pedagogy.

7 Allan C. Ornstein, Daniel U. Levine, Gerald L. Gutek and David E. Vocke, Foundations of Education,

12 ed. (United States of America: Cengage Learning, 2014), 393.

th
and otherness of the student it may not only hinder in promoting an ethical relationship

but may also affect the teaching-learning process and outcome.

The current trend for uniformity and standardization in contemporary education

is another compelling problem. The pressure for uniformity and standardization in

education has been a serious problem and a source of conflict among teachers, students

and administrators. Education scholars have pointed out that the increasing pressure for

uniformity in education doesn’t give room to the uniqueness of teachers and students.

The recent trend for uniformity “stifles the diversity and uniqueness of students and

teachers in a time that needs more heterogeneity in education, taking into account that

we live in a postmodern and cosmopolitan era.”8

In the Philippines there are also calls for the abolition of standardized tests on the

ground that it doesn’t measure effectively student’s learning. An association of private

elementary and high schools called on the Department of Education (DepEd) to abolish

the so-called standardized test which is known as the National Achievement Test (NAT),

claiming that, “students need to think, not memorize.”9

According to Nordtug, this uniformity in educational practices puts “emphasis on

evidence-based practice and laws and regulations that place restrictions on the

relationship between teachers and students and teaching in general.”10

Furthermore, the pressure for uniformity in education promotes “discrimination”

and disrespect towards the uniqueness of students who varies in the level of learning,

intelligence and opportunities. As Nelson writes:

8 Birgit Nordtug, “The Welcoming of Levinas in the Philosophy of Education-At The Cost of the
Other?” Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2013): 252. Cited hereafter as Nordtug, “The
Welcoming of Levinas.”
9 Helen Flores, “Private schools seek abolition of achievement test,” [Article On-line]

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2014/03/11/1299486/private-schools-seek-abolition-achievement-test
(accessed 7 March 2015).
10 Nordtug, “The Welcoming of Levinas,” 252.
 The standards movement can be thought of as a new kind of
discrimination. Under the guise of fairness, offering all students the same
curriculum, same forms of instruction, and same objective assessments,
students from less wealthy homes with well-educated parents are denied
the education they need.11

The current emphasis on “sameness” in current education is considered as totalizing,

hence an ethical problem from a Levinasian perspective. Some problems with uniformity

in assessment and evaluation is due to the fact that they are rarely viewed from ethical

perspective which results to the lack of awareness of its ethical or moral consequences.

This view is supported by Elizabeth Campbell who claims:

The moral dimensions of teaching and the ethical nature of the teacher’s
professional responsibilities are often seen to be taken for granted in both
the academy and the practitioner communities, overshadowed by cognitive
theories connected to teaching and learning, effective approaches to
measurement and assessment, classroom management strategies, and other
aspects that, while naturally important, are rarely viewed from a moral or
ethical perspective.12

This moral problem makes us aware of the need to consider and incorporate

ethical paradigms that may provide ethical insights to this problem. This paper for

instance argues that one essential and valuable contribution for developing an

educational practice that is sensitive to the diversity of teaching and learning and takes

into account the uniqueness of the students and the teachers is the ethical perspective

being provided by the ethical philosophy of Levinas. As a matter of fact, Levinas’s

emphasis on the uniqueness of the self and the Other has been recently invoked by

education scholars as a voice in opposition to uniformity in education.13

11 Jack L. Nelson, Stuart B. Palonsky and Mary Rose McCarthy, Critical Issues in Education, 6th ed.
(New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2007), 141-142.
12 Elizabeth Campbell, “The Ethics of Teaching as a Moral Profession,” Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 38,

No. 4 (September 2008): 358. Cited hereafter as Campbell, “The Ethics of Teaching.”
13 Nordtug, “The Welcoming of Levinas,” 251.
 Another current moral problem is the problem of domination in teaching. In

teaching, the teacher is commonly viewed as the one who is in charge and has the power

while the students are viewed as powerless.14 In North America this claim is evident. A

study of nearly 7,000 accounts of classroom practice from 1890 to 1980 concluded that

most classroom teaching maybe described as teacher centered and teacher dominated.15

This image of the teacher as powerful or dominating and of the students as powerless

and subjected to the teacher may pose ethical problem. Jim Knight remarked:

“dominating teachers can make students feel impotent, and as a result of feeling

powerless or hopeless, some students lose the desire to learn.”16 In the Philippines,

obsession with power and authority lead some teachers to commit various kinds of

abuses. According to the DepEd there have been a total of 28 cases of physical, verbal,

and or psychological abuse in NCR Public Schools alone since 2007. From January to July

2011 alone there are already 11 cases of abuse recorded.17 When teachers abuse their

power and dominate students this can lead to an intoxicating feeling among students and

the undue “exertion of power over students can be detrimental to everyone in the

classroom, including the teacher.”18 Parini claims that the image of the teacher as a master

who commands and terrifies students is not necessary and will not work in colleges

especially in a democratic world.19

14 Joseph H. Kupfer, Autonomy and Social Interaction (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 151.
15 McNamara, Classroom Pedagogy, 17.
16 Jim Knight, “The Five Temptations of Teachers, Temptation Four: Destructive Power over

Empathy” [Article On-line]; http://www.radicallearners.com/destructivepower/ (accessed 5 March 2015).

Cited hereafter as Knight, “The Five Temptations of Teachers.”
17 “Terror teachers,” [Article On-line]; http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/current-affairs
programs/08/05/11/failon-ngayon-terror-teachers (accessed 7 March 2015).
18 Knight, “The Five Temptations of Teachers,” [Article On-line].

19 Jay Parini, The Art of Teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 139.
 In response to this moral problem, Levinas’s ethical concept of the Other as weak,

destitute and vulnerable may help promote teaching as student-oriented.20 It may also

help teachers to “be freed from an all-knowing and almighty complex.”21 A pedagogy

based on Levinas’s ethical paradigm empowers the student. We have to keep in mind

that “If we are serious about bringing the student into some ownership of the learning

and assessment process (and hence into self-evaluation and metacognition) it means

teachers sharing power with students-rather than exerting power over them.”22

The Student as the Unique Other

What ethical insights can we draw out from Levinas’s philosophy in response to

the problem of discrimination, stereotyping, racism and labelling?

Levinas’s concept of the Other as unique and absolutely Other may provide

inspiration and ethical insights for teachers and educational institutions to accommodate

the uniqueness, differences and the otherness of each student. In his ethical philosophy

Levinas puts emphasis on the incomprehensibility of the Other. According to Levinas one

cannot have full or complete knowledge of the Other, this is why Levinas calls the Other

as an enigma. The Other is a mystery that one cannot fully comprehend nor one can have

full knowledge of. The Other always surpasses the idea that one has of the Other. As

Kirby puts it: “the Other transcends, escapes, overflows my ability to comprehend. There

is something about the Other that will always remain a mystery to me.”23

Furthermore, Sharon Todd argues that knowledge of the Other is equivalent to

reducing the Other to the same, which is a form of totalization. She writes, “when I think

20 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans., Alphonso Lingis
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press: 1969), Cited hereafter as Levinas, Totality and
Infinity.
21 Woo, “Teaching the Unknowable Other,” 79.

22 Mortimore, Understanding Pedagogy, 58.

23 Kirby, “Encountering and Understanding Suffering,” 157.

I know [the Other], when I think I understand the Other, I am exercising my knowledge

over the Other, shrouding the Other in my own totality. The Other becomes an object of

my comprehension, my world, my narrative, reducing the Other to me.”24

In order for the teacher to really encounter the unique Other, the unique student,

he must avoid all forms of reduction and ontological violence against the Other by way

of thematization, categorization, and generalization (racism, stereotyping, labeling,

discrimination). The teacher is responsible to every unique student. The teacher views

and perceives each student as incomparably worthy and as a singular other.25 The student

is perceived as irreplaceably worthy of the teacher’s responsibility regardless of the

student’s race, gender or culture. The teacher cannot risk acting based on what he/she

knows of the student, but the teacher must be open to surprises. Every person is unique

and that each student is unique, irreducible to the teacher’s comprehension and beyond

his grasp.26 “Teachers need to review on a regular basis their beliefs and attitudes about

learners and learning, challenge constantly the expectations they have of their

students.”27 The Other as unique and unpredictable exceeds our expectations of the

Other.28 By being open to the otherness of the student, the teacher must also be open for

the future. When teachers perceive students beyond the everyday actions of judging them

through their actions and behavior they may “encounter something more valuable and

even unknowable.”29 “The student’s face remains a non-phenomenal phenomenon. In

other words, the face of the student cannot be effectively reduced to our interpretations

24 Todd, “On Not Knowing the Other,” 73.

25 Joldersma, “Beyond Rational Autonomy,” 43.
26 “The Other…presents itself as someone who cannot be grasped or objectified.” Peperzak, To the

Other, 144.
27 Mortimore, Understanding Pedagogy, 59.

28 Julian Edgoose, “Teaching Our Way Out When Nobody Knows the Way: A Levinasian Response

to Modern Hope,” in Levinas and Education: At the Intersection of Faith and Reason, ed. Denise Egéa-Kuehne
(New York: Routledge, 2008), 108. Cited hereafter as Edgoose, “Teaching Our Way Out.”
29 Morrison, “Good Teaching,” 6.
and judgments.”30 One way for teaching to be non-violent is by respecting the otherness

of the Other, aware that the student is out of reach and is beyond one’s grasp. 31 Thus,

Levinas’s ethics serves as a call to end discrimination, stereotyping, racism, etc. in

teaching and other educational practices.

The uniqueness of the student also poses serious question on the ethical aspect of

standardized tests and assessments. When each student exhibits different kinds of

intelligences a standardized tests may not be fair and may be totalizing,32 it robs the Other

of his uniqueness and thus, it is a form of ‘ontological violence’ wherein students are

simply seen as the same, belonging to the same genus of students.

The Student as the Master

The concept of the Other as weak, vulnerable and destitute can provide significant

ethical insights in emphasizing the value, power and authority that resides in students

which can serve as a response to the problem of control and domination in teaching.

The face of the student “reveal(s) a being whose ultimate vulnerability and need

always put me in a position of obligation.” 33 The student is ‘poor’ not in the material

aspect but rather his poverty is expressed in the need to acquire knowledge and skills.

The need of the student invites the teacher to respond to his needs. The face of the student

expresses a need which asks and demand that the teacher share what he has, his

knowledge and skills to the student. The material poverty and destitution of the Other in

the work of Levinas when seen in relation to the student is not just exclusive to the

30 Glenn J. Morrison, “Humanism, Education and Spirituality: Approaching Psychosis with

Levinas,” Australian EJournal of Theology, No. 12 (2008): 12. [Journal on-line];
http://www.acu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/107528/Morrison_Education_and_Humanism.Levinas
.pdf. (accessed 10 August 2014).
31 Joldersma, “Pedagogy of the Other,” 185.

32 Comprehend in all-encompassing way.

33 Standish, “Levinas and the Language of the Curriculum,” 59.

material poverty of the Other but (mental, intellectual) poverty as the lack of knowledge

and skills.

The student as an Other calls upon the teacher to respond, is the real master in the

teaching scene. The teacher simply appears as a servant to the Other who commands and

obligates the self. The student in his poverty and weakness is the one who has the real

authority and not the teacher. Authority resides in the face of the Other. “The weakness

of the face is in fact its power, it is moral power, or in Levinas’s words, it is its authority.” 34

The Other in its weakness and vulnerability is superior to the self.

Adriaan Peperzak writes:

The Other comes from “on high” is superior to me, not necessarily of
course, in the sense of superior intelligence, skills, talents, virtues or
holiness, but as human existence that, in its poverty and needs, surprises
and inevitably obligates me. The relation revealed in any encounter is a
relation of inequality and height, a relation of asymmetry. The appearance
of another in the world, which is also mine, reveals to me that I am a
servant, responsible for this Other’s life and destiny.35

The student is the master and the teacher is the servant who is responsible for the life and

destiny of the student. The student as an Other is superior to the teacher because of its

poverty and need. The student is a master through his face which obligates or commands

the self. Levinas writes, “There is a commandment in the appearance of the face [of the

Other] as if a master spoke to me.”36 The Other though vulnerable and poor is the master

commanding me to respond to his needs. In fact, it is the vulnerability of the student as

Other that prohibits me from committing violence against him.

The above-mentioned claims pose difficult challenges to teachers who see teaching

as a form of power and domination over the student. The student’s face makes a

34 Todd, “Welcoming and Difficult Learning,” 190.

35 Adriaan T. Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1997), 23. Cited hereafter as Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.
36 Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 89.
command and through this command the student is seen as a master. The teacher in the

teaching scenario is in the accusative mode, “Here I am” rather than in the nominative.

The “Here I am” does not signify that the self is the most important being or the central

figure to be served, but rather it signifies that as a teacher “I am at your disposal.” 37 This

is another challenge to the traditional view of teaching wherein it is the teacher alone who

commands and it is the teacher alone who is the master and has the authority and the

students are simply subjected to the command and the power of the teacher. However,

we are reminded that this command and authority of the student as an Other comes from

the students’ poverty, vulnerability and powerlessness. Anna Strhan speaks of the source

of the authority of the Other as coming from his vulnerability and is not a kind of

authoritarianism. She compares the authority of the Other to the child who exercise

power through his vulnerability. She writes:

The authority of the Other does not come from a concrete relationship of
power. The mastery of the Other stems from his very vulnerability: his
vulnerability gives his interpellation an urgency and places his need before
my own. This is the sense in which he has authority over me. It is the
authority of vulnerability. Does the infant then have mastery over his
mother? The mother will put the infant’s need before her own, where
mastery will reside in the power of this vulnerability’s appeal.38

As a teacher, one must recognize the Other as one to whom “I have responsibility,

and thus he is in this sense my Master, as he calls me to responsibility from his position

of vulnerability.”39 Since the student as the Other is the master the teacher realizes that

he is a servant of the Other; it is part of the plea of the Other to put his needs before his

own.

37Peperzak, To the Other, 25.

38Strhan, “Bringing Me More Than I Contain,” 425.
39 Anna Strhan, Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility (Chichester:

Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 26. Cited hereafter as Strhan, Levinas, Subjectivity, Education.

 Levinas shifts our perspective and he calls teachers to a humbling experience that

they are called to teach and to serve the Other and not to dominate or control them. This

renewed perspective is a call for teachers to examine their real roles and identities in the

classroom. The student commands from the height. The height from which the student

commands is due “to its poverty and destitution.”40 The Other through his needs

commands the self to respond and it “reveals that I am his servant.”

Conclusion

The ethics of Levinas is indeed significant and relevant in promoting an ethical teaching

by “helping educators raise questions, gain a sharper awareness of the ethical issues and

work towards a more ethical rethinking of education.”41

40 Perpich, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, 117.

41 Denise Egéa-Kuehne, “Levinas: Teaching “Conscience” and the Other” in Philosophy of
Education 2000, ed. Lynda Stone (Urbana, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 2000), 213.