Bringing Friendship into Education.

Taking friendship seriously in the educational environment means moving beyond contemporary ideas of education focused on employment, hyper-rationalism, and rote learning. Instead, friendship redirects attention to the relational dimension of education, placing relationships at the center of the learning environment. Whether between students, between teachers, or between students and teachers, a friendship-based educational model emphasizes how these relationships can be more open, mutually supportive, and focused on nurturing the best in each person. It moves the focus away from quantification and reductive assessments, a monetary economy, and unsupportive power dynamics, toward a focus on everybody’s gifts and processes aimed at mutual betterment and greater relational equality. A philosophy promoting friendship in higher education, then, could help students and educators to stay focused on people helping one another to grow, the relevance of the emotional life for education, the significance of a shared truth and a consensus of values, and the need for courage and care in intellectual pursuits. This would help dispel the dejectedness permeating higher education through engagements that encourage the development of the whole person in a supportive community. Students pursue education to attain specific goals: self-betterment, a financially secure job, their lifelong dreams. Educators teach because it is enjoyable, offers financial stability, and allows them to pursue their dreams within and beyond the classroom.

But education expands beyond facts from a textbook or exam success; it concerns learning to live well in every realm of our lives and in every context we enter, or at least trying our best to improve. And Aristotle’s view of friendship reminds us that education is more than an instrumental good; he reminds us that there is more to think about than the pleasure and utility students and educators get from the classroom. Rather, through nurturing friendship, the classroom becomes a site of mutual support. In seeing students and teachers through the lens of friendship, the relationship becomes about mutual betterment, making students better students and educators better educators, and all of them better people who live life more fully. Aristotle’s emphasis on friends being concerned with the excellence of their friends is crucial for rethinking education, because it redirects attention to the cultivation of a good human being. Moreover, this reorientation can affect every relationship the students and educators have, whether on campus, in wider society, or at home. 

Relationships in educational contexts occur within a lattice of lives with unique struggles, fears, joys, and hopes. Surface interactions, however, fail to go beyond polite pretenses and habitual decency. Yet using Bacon’s understanding of friendship, educational systems could learn to avoid the distancing effects of titles and power and dive below the surface to engage the challenges people face. Students and teachers can also learn from Bacon’s emphasis on friends helping one another with intellectual problems and decision-making. The development of critical-thinking skills is already a big part of education, but their development could be greatly facilitated by emphasising friendship in educational relationships

 Friendship’s emotional side may seem inappropriate for student-teacher relationships, and unnecessary between colleagues. The problematic assumption here is that emotions are unimportant in the educational environment, except in extraordinary circumstances such as dealing with distraught students. But Bacon’s understanding of friendship emphasizes cultivating the whole person -the rational and the emotional dimensions -to bring balance to lives and relationships. Instead of thinking about learning only as a rational process leading to intellectual autonomy, students, teachers, and colleagues should acknowledge and honor the emotional depths of those with whom they relate. This provides an opportunity in education to encounter others through intimacy with their emotional worlds. C.S. Lewis focuses on the open delight friends share with each other as they pursue a common truth or idea, each person bringing out different dimensions of their friends, from actions and intellect to emotions and humor. What is most important for the educational environment, however, is that friends are following a unique idea or truth. Lewis writes how a group of hunting friends encounters a deer as more than food; they glimpse and can appreciate the animal’s beauty, even when the rest of the world cannot understand it. In educational friendships, for example, a common vision could be associated with social justice, diversity, or living a good life and being a good citizen. Students and educators could bond in the classroom, in the halls, over food, or in meetings in mutually-supportive ways to understand a common truth. This creates commonalities among the members of the community, bringing people’s minds, intentions, and actions together, grounded in common values. Despite differences, students and educators stand shoulder-to-shoulder in an inclusive way. Such consensus in diversity supports character development and the expression of individuals’ unique attributes, both intellectual and emotional, because each person can have a sense of belonging and security within the campus community. As she stresses the importance of the example of friendship for all relationships, Mary Hunt reveals how no aspect of life can escape its relevance. Just so, the roles of student and teacher should incorporate the values, support, and benefits of friendship. Hunt’s analysis forces us to reassess how mindful we are of the physical dimensions of education: students and academics are embodied beings. Her focus also urges us to examine how love can shape and enhance educational relationships: instead of competition and power hierarchies, love concerns aiding others to benefit and uplift them. Moreover, the incorporation of spirituality would mean that learning transcends the business models and reductionist views that sell education solely for employment purposes. Instead, education would be grounded in insights into the endless interdependencies permeating both life and intellectual disciplines. Education, the multifarious aspects of life, and the robust fields of thought should not be separated, but woven together to bring multiple perspectives to bear on the complexities of existence. Finally, strength or power in education means boldly pursuing learning, understanding the implications of thought and action, and being able to choose the most beneficial paths despite resistance from unjust traditions. Pursuing friendship in education, then, does not imply making things easier and cozier. To the contrary, education becomes more challenging and risky. Grounded in friendship values, education would be concerned with changing people and the world through intrepid thinking that crosses boundaries and is sustained by courageous caring. Thus, education becomes a process focused on healthy relationships uplifting all who take part. This is a shift to quality, and its value could be assessed by observing the increased trust, benevolence, open mindedness, understanding, and empathy that bind the community together. Respect for others is exemplified in the best friendships. The ability to transform conflicts into better relationships is another marker of a healthy community. Employment opportunities and capturing the market would still be relevant, of course, but they would be relegated to being a byproduct ofthe beneficial relationships that form the foundation of the educational institution that has chosen to be guided and reshaped by a philosophy of friendship. Through healthier communities, more supportive interactions inside and beyond the classroom, and deeper commitments to each other, colleges could gain reputations as transformative environments

Closing Thoughts 

There is little mystery concerning why philosophers have so highly revered the best in friendship: it is an open, caring relationship grounded in equality, mutual care and betterment, a deep commitment to each friend, and an absence of the limitations found in other ways of loving. It is important to remember Aristotle’s remark in Politics that “community depends on friendship; and when there is enmity instead of friendship, [people] will not even share the same path” (1295b23-25). So the warmth of friendship is a crucial part of a good life and a healthy society; it brings people together in a lasting way. Furthermore, it can be argued that Socrates’ deep philosophical engagement with others was also an act of friendship. His philosophical pursuit takes on added significance when one remembers that philosophy’s etymological roots in the love of vsdsdom (philosophia) are grounded in phileo (I love), philos (love of) and philia (friendship love). From Plato to Hunt, friendship has received more praise than disparagement from philosophers, and this is because, ideally, friendship helps to bring out the best in each person. It does this by being receptive to friends’ unique gifts and enhancing them in ways that help friends to become the best people they can be. In this way, cultivating friendship can aid students and educators to focus on each other’s gifts, to help each person to develop in her or his unique ways, and to do so in a caring, courageous, and receptive fashion. By putting friendship at the center of higher education, the classroom and the entire community could become more humane and focused on the various dimensions of every person’s life. Higher education is currently in need of help. Through nurturing friendship, education could become much more than it is, and more able to honor and to cultivate every community member’s distinctive gifts. 

© Dr. Robert Michael Ruehl is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and a faculty graduate tutor in the Writing Center at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.