Abstract
Drawing upon Nel Noddings’ contention that, if children are to be happy in schools, their teachers should also be happy, this paper tries to explore a way in which the obviously intimate but seemingly conflicting connections between students’ and teachers’ happiness can be understood from the viewpoint of Stanley Cavell’s reading of J. S. Mill. Mill’s conceptions of desire and pleasure are examined as a means of liberating the above connection from existing prioritization: that is, teachers’ or students’ happiness comes first. The pursuit of happiness for both teachers and students is discussed, in the hopes of illuminating alternative images of teacher education.
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Notes
The Japanese government launched a series of teacher education programs, such as induction training for newly appointed teachers and training for all teachers with 5, 10, and 20 years of experience. Induction training and the training program for teachers with 10 years’ experience are mandatory. These two programs have been implemented by local Boards of Education since 1988 and 2003, respectively (Fujita 2007, p. 45).
Miura’s research provides another example of teachers’ impaired sense of happiness as a result of teacher education reform. The Teacher Certification Renewal System, which requires in-service teachers to complete a total of 30 h of training to renew their teaching certificates, has been in place since 2009. Miura has studied attendees of the training sessions since their inception and indicates that many teachers felt that their pride was infringed because they were forced to take courses regardless of what they had accomplished in their teaching experience (Miura 2010, pp. 35–36). The sense of discouragement and helplessness implied here echoes Fujita’s point.
This paper deals with utilitarianism as an essential doctrine of Mill’s philosophy. Bentham, of course, cannot be ignored in this theoretical group. He devised the most celebrated definition of utilitarianism: “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”. This study, however, does not equate utilitarianism to Bentham’s theory because, as Wendy Donner indicates, Mill rejects much of classical Benthamite utilitarianism and redefines it, especially by means of exploring the qualitative aspect of pleasure, in which Bentham shows little interest (Donner 1991, p. 1; p. 8). Mill’s notion of the quality of pleasure will be discussed later.
Cavell sees an underlying deontological notion in Mill’s utilitarianism here (Cavell 2004, p. 92).
The following passage of Mill’s appears at least twice in full in Cavell’s work (Cavell 1990, pp. 62–63; 2004, pp. 96–97). Though it looks like a relatively long quote, I am hesitant to break it up and write it in the same manner as Cavell does. The condensed quality of the text is acclaimed as follows: “If a bible of perfectionism were to be put together, the paragraph of Mill’s containing this perception, together with whatever is necessary to understand it, would demand prominence in it” (Cavell 2004, p. 98).
Fulford presents an intense discussion on the theme of recovery of voice in classrooms, relating the silencing of voice to Thoreau’s notion of “quiet desperation” (Fulford 2009, p. 231). She calls for attention to the danger that educational aids such as writing frames, which are widely adopted in academic writing courses in current British universities, suppress students’ individual expressions, rather than helping them to find their own voices in the process of writing (pp. 232–233). The silencing of voice is, she points out, a “threat” to democratic society since self-reliant individuals, who are averse to conformity, contribute to the “society, and its religion, arts and culture” (p. 231). “If the denial of voice is a denial of the self”, she argues, “then the recovery of voice is a finding of voice in a continual process of re-finding one’s self” (p. 235). Borrowing her point, it is possible to say that to have a language for one’s own desire does not mean to possess fixed frames for sorting one’s wants and needs. Rather, giving expression to desire signifies the creation and re-creation of desire, in the ongoing process of re-finding the self.
This reengagement with society (and with the self as a sociopolitical entity) connotes Cavell’s response to skepticism. Neither total separation from the community nor conformity to it exempts us from skepticism. If a person is totally separated from the community, she feels that she has no power to affect others. The minds of others remain unintelligible to her. In a state of conformity, by contrast, our voices are hardly heard; a voice to declare that “I think” “I am” (Cavell 1990, p. 47), or that the world exists.
In a chapter named “Aversive Thinking” in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Cavell describes the idea of the perfectionism by means of a reading Emerson’s texts (especially “The American Scholar” and “Self-Reliance”) (Cavell 1990, pp. 33–63). Aversive thinking is discussed as a process of separating ourselves from conformity and, thus, from ourselves as we stand (p. 47). The process of Emerson’s thinking has two names in Perfectionism: transfiguration or conversion (p. 36).
Cavell’s original expression is “the transfiguration of mourning as grief into morning as dawning and ecstasy” (Cavell 1996, p. 212). The notion of “ecstasy” is connected to departure. Its Greek etymology suggests that “ecstasy” connotes not only bliss but also “ex-stance”, standing outside of oneself.
In studying the nature of reading in perfectionism, Arcilla puts forward the point at which critical argument on perfectionism itself takes place. As Arcilla demonstrates, the attempt to question the notion of perfectionism embodies the characteristics of the study of perfectionism. This is because such attempts have an aspect of perfecting the idea of perfectionism. Arcilla argues that a moral predicament discussed in the genre of “perfectionist” text is better identified with the genre of “existentialist” texts instead (Arcilla 2012, p. 163). Another example that critically elaborates the notion of perfectionism is: Saito’s The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson, in which the author elucidates connections between Deweyan pragmatism and Cavellian perfectionism.
Cavell states: “If the thoughts of a text such as Emerson’s […] are yours, then you do not need them. If its thoughts are not yours, they will not do you good. The problem is that the text’s thoughts are neither exactly mine nor not mine. In their sublimity as my rejected—say repressed—thoughts, they represent my further, next, unattained but attainable self” (Cavell 1990, p. 57 [original emphasis]). Donatelli calls this idea as “a central paradox of perfectionism” (Donatelli 2006, p. 40). He paraphrases the paradox as, “If truth is not yours already it will not do you good; but if it is yours already you will not need it” (ibid.). This implies a unique characteristic of perfectionism: aversion to conformity is not a total and simple denial of the existing literature, but reengagement with it to learn to depart from it. In that sense, perfectionist approach can be considered as a continuous and paradoxical journey enabled by a sense of acceptance and resistance rather than avoiding X and favoring Y (not X).
There is a chapter in Mill’s Autobiography in which Mill’s own experience of transformation through reading is depicted. Cavell commends this section as “fantastic, and moving” (Cavell 2004, p. 83). The text gives descriptions of his “well-known mental crisis in his youth” (Donner 1991, p. 8). One day, a question occurred to him: “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” (Mill 1981, p. 139). His “irrepressible self-consciousness” answered, “No!” (ibid.). From then, he started to feel: “All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing to left to live for” (ibid.). It seems, to him, that his education, which was “wholly his [father James Mill’s] work”, had irremediably “failed” (ibid.). Mill refers to this period as “the dry heavy dejection of the melancholy winter” (p. 143). After approximately half a year, he writes: “A small ray of light broke in upon my gloom” (p. 145). He read J. F. Marmontel’s Memoirs and came to the passage “which relates his father’s death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them—would supply the place of all that they had lost” (p. 145). Presumably, young Marmontel was around fifteen years old at that time (Marmontel 1956, p. 39), by the way. Mill felt that a “vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over” (Mill 1981, p. 145). He continues: “The oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hopeless: […] I had still, it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for happiness, are made” (ibid.).
The melancholy and recovery depicted here may shed light on one aspect of the process of mourning as morning. His falling into depression resembles the disappointment with criteria. His double’s answer of “No” to his question can be interpreted as a denial of the world and of the life of his that had been wholly the work of his prominent father’s education. It expresses a sense of despair that the world and the words, given by his father and accepted by Mill, are not his. From this point of view, it is not hard to imagine that the scene of Marmontel’s declaration has special significance to the discouraged Mill. Mill is mourning for the world of his father. At this stage, Marmontel’s text works as a sympathetic equal to Mill: they are both grieving over the loss of the secured world.
Interestingly, though, another side of reading seems to be at work here. Compare the statement: In Marmontel’s original text, young Marmontel says to his family (mostly young brothers and sisters): “My children, you lose a father; you find one again. I will supply his place […] I take upon myself all his duties, and you are orphans no more” (Marmontel 1956, p. 46). Mill restates this as: “I would be everything to you—would supply the place of all that you had lost” (Mill 1981, p. 145). Here, Mill, who has just entered deeply into Marmontel’s text, recreates it in his own terms, namely, he leaves the text as such and the world as it stands. While Marmontel’s intention is to take over his father’s position (“his place”), Mill’s declaration recalls the world as it used to be (“the place of all that you had lost”). In saying “I will be everything to you” to himself, Mill starts to recreate what everything in the world means to him.
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Takayanagi, M. The Perfection of the Teacher Through the Pursuit of Happiness: Cavell’s Reading of J. S. Mill. Stud Philos Educ 35, 17–28 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-015-9462-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-015-9462-7