| Abstract: | Phenomenologist Jean‐Luc Marion describes our capacity for awe as an ability to recognise that certain phenomena are saturated. More than we constitute them with our categorical frames or organising objectives, the phenomena constitute us; their excess and givenness overwhelms our ability to fully grasp them. It is through this experience of awe and wonder, Marion suggests, that we are drawn into loving something or someone. In tension with this experience is the attempt (omnipresent in educational contexts) to organise and demarcate phenomenon (or fields of study) into a tidy list of coherent standards. This reductive move, while pedagogically pragmatic, risks masking the ‘exuberant splendor’ of saturated phenomenon, obscuring what initially drew teachers into their respective disciplines. What moves teachers (and students) to love a discipline, Marion suggests, is not standards, which are often instrumentally selected, but an experience of saturated phenomenon. More than standards, a teacher's deep and often secret hope is that her students love or at least appreciate her love for her subject. A teacher's love for her discipline, and her hope to impart it to her students, should stand in tension with the standards movement. |
