Emotions function as pedagogical signals demanding agenda flexibility

Evidence

As was so well brought to light by Gilbert Simondon, our emotions express the state of the transindividual relation that unites us with our environment: they serve as a thermometer for measuring the state of our attentional ecosystem. Contrary to the cliché which idealizes the teacher, particularly at higher levels, as a paragon of rationality, and contrary to the method of competitive selection which, in French establishments, favours disciplined knowledge without granting the least pertinence to emotional sensitivity, the fate of teaching is in play at a more fundamental level than that of information transmission and reasoning: in the ability of each participant to know how to pay attention to their affects, which are always necessarily shared since they emanate from the relations established between the preindividual portions of their personalities. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 266 (#expands, via linked claim)

Culpabilization, obligation, and verification are the series of power relations exercised by the typical professor.’ But, as Foucault points out, at the College de France, courses are open to anyone who wishes to attend: “If it interests him, he comes; if it doesn’t interest him, he doesn’t come.”* At the College a professor is paid to present his work, and “it 1s up to the audience to say or to show whether or not it is interested” — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 12 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Generating classroom excitement requires abandoning fixed agendas and fixed authority — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 24; Emotions function as thermometers of the attentional ecosystem between persons — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 266; Pedagogical power operates through guilt, obligation, and verification — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 12 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Emotions function as thermometers of the attentional ecosystem between persons #expands (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 266
• Pedagogical power operates through guilt, obligation, and verification #complicates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 12