Teachers, Students, and Sex

How did I miss this?

A teacher friend of mine pointed it out to me this morning, so I’m four days late in responding. And, boy,

do I have a response.

To summarize: An Oxford philosophy (or social and political theory) professor named Amia Srinivasan wrote a guest essay in the New York Times, published on September 3, called

“What’s Wrong With Sex Between Professors and Students? It’s Not What You Think.”

See what I’m sayin’? How did I miss it?

And here’s the thing: I would argue that what’s wrong with sex between professors (or any teachers) and students is not what Amia Srinivasan thinks.

Not because of her arguments about consent and power differentials, but because of her assumptions about teaching and learning.

Here’s an important quote from the article:

Teachers, as teachers, understand how to do certain things; students, as students, want to understand how to do those things. The tacit promise of the classroom is that the teacher will work to confer on the student some of his knowledge and understanding. In the best case, the teacher-student relationship arouses in the student a strong desire, a sense of thrilled if inchoate infatuation. That desire is the lifeblood of the classroom, and it is the teacher’s duty to nurture and direct it toward its proper object: learning. The teacher who allows his student’s desire to settle on him as an object, or the teacher who actively makes himself the object of her desire, has failed in his role as a teacher.

OK, starting with the first sentence: This might be one definition of learning, that students want to understand how to do certain things that the teachers understand how to do. But

hunh.

I would define learning much more broadly as wanting to make sense of things for myself by integrating new information, practicing new skills, and — importantly — organizing all of this in a way that works for me. That changes me. That helps me understand me and other people and the subject matter and the world.

This problematizes the next sentence in the above quote about the “tacit promise of the classroom,” which is that teachers will (apparently) attempt to make students more like the teachers. I as a teacher will give my students some of what I already posses: my knowledge and understanding.

Sorry.

That’s balderdash.

Just ask Paolo Freire.

My job as a teacher is to help my students grow and develop as knowers in their own right. It is to help them forge relationships with the content I happen to have a particular (perhaps even passionate) relationship with in their own ways. My job as a teacher is not to make little me’s. It is to help others become through fruitful relationships not just with content but with other students and with me as well.

And, contrary to the final sentence in the above quote, teachers’ relationships with students in the classroom necessarily make teachers objects of students’ desire. And frustration. And disappointment. And hope. And hatred. The natural pushes and pulls on any significant, meaningful relationship.

Because teachers are , at bottom, whenever necessary, attachment figures to their students. They are

always

always

always

objects. They must be available for their students’ use as those students go through the stressful, “thrill[ing],” risky, desire-full, repulsive project of learning — that is, changing.

So, while desire is certainly one of the “lifeblood[s] of the classroom,” it’s not the only one. Fear is another one. Resistance and opposition are two more. Anxiety is a sure bet. Excitement and joy would certainly be welcome. I agree with Amia Srinivasan that “it is the teacher’s duty to nurture and direct” all these normal emotional/intellectual forces in ways that promote learning.

But I’m stuck on the notion that learning itself is an object. The teacher is an object, yes. Other students are objects. The content is an object or a series of objects. But learning? To me it’s the line that connects all these objects. It is

what emerges from relationships

with these objects — the content, the teacher, the students. The acts of teaching. The activities and assignments and tests. The ideas and thoughts, the words that are said and written. Lots of objects in a classroom.

But learning? It’s not an object. It is, simply (and complexly, beautifully complexly), organismic change.

Soooooo. If you’re a teacher and you feel sexually attracted to or seduced by a student, Amia Srinivasan is correct: It is not what you think. But it is also not what she thinks. It has to do with transference and countertransference, which are normal and informative sources of emotional and relational data that must be examined, not acted out on, so as to figure out what is really going on. (In short: Get thee to a psycho-coach!)

Teachers are not sexual partners to their students. They are developmental partners. Just like parents are. We forge a

sacred bond

with our students, no matter what age they are, that we alone are responsible for honoring.