On the Pedagogy of Suffering

Hermeneutic and Buddhist Meditations

David W. Jardine, Christopher Gilham, Graham McCaffrey

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781453914250
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This text articulates how and why suffering can be pedagogical in character and how it is often key to authentic and meaningful acts of teaching and learning. This is an ancient idea from the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus (c. 525 BCE) – pathei mathos or «learning through suffering». In our understandable rush to ameliorate suffering at every turn and to consider every instance of it as an error to be avoided at all costs, we explore how the pedagogy that can come from suffering becomes obscured and something vital to a rich and vibrant pedagogy can be lost. This collection threads through education, nursing, psychiatry, ecology, and medicine, through scholarship and intimate breaths, and blends together affinities between hermeneutic conceptions of the cultivation of character and Buddhist meditations on suffering and its locale in our lives. This book will be useful for graduate courses on hermeneutic research in education, educational psychology, counseling, and nursing/medicine.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• “Just This Once”: An Introduction to the Pedagogy of Suffering (David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey, and Christopher Gilham )
• Chapter One: “You’re Very Clever Young Man” (David W. Jardine)
• Chapter Two: Idiot Compassion (graham McCaffrey)
• Chapter Three: From the “Science of Disease” to the “Understanding of Those Who Suffer”: The Cultivation of an Interpretive Understanding of “Behaviour Problems” in Children (Christopher Gilham)
• Chapter Four: A Pocket of Darkness (Judson Innes)
• Chapter Five: First Fragment: Breaking the Gaze (David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey, & Christopher Gilham)
• Chapter Six: Suffering Loves and Needs Company: Buddhist and Daoist Perspectives on the Counselor as Companion (Avraham Cohen & Heesoon Bai)
• Chapter Seven: Codes (S. John Williamson)
• Chapter Eight: Second Fragment: Thoughts on “Breaking the Gaze” (Christopher Gilham, David Jardine, & Graham McCaffrey)
• Chapter Nine: My Treasured Relation (Jodi Latremouille)
• Chapter Ten: Some Introductory Words for Two Little Earth-Cousins (david w. jardine)
• Chapter Eleven: This Is Why We Read This Is Why We Write (David W. Jardine)
• Chapter Twelve: The Elision of Suffering in Mental Health Nursing (Graham McCaffrey)
• Chapter Thirteen: Fragment Three: Bringing Suffering into the Path (David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey & Christopher Gilham)
• Chapter Fourteen: A Black Blessing (Alexandra Fidyk)
• Chapter Fifteen: Time (Judson Innes)
• Chapter Sixteen: Quickening, Patience, Suffering (David W. Jardine)
• Chapter Seventeen: Smart Ass Cripple (W. John Williamson)
• Chapter Eighteen: The Comfort of Suffering (Gilbert Drapeau)
• Chapter Nineteen: Fragment Four: “And Yet, and Yet” (Christopher Gilham, David W. Jardine & Graham McCaffrey)
• Chapter Twenty: “Neither They Nor Their Reward” (Alan A. Block)
• Chapter Twenty-One: “Nobody Understood Why I Should Be Grieving” (David W. Jardine)
• Chapter Twenty-Two: “God’s Sufferings Teach God Nothing”: Some Emails (Alan A. Block & David W. Jardine)
• Chapter Twenty-Three: Compassion Loves Suffering: Notes on a Paper Never Written (Christopher Gilham, David Jardine, & Graham McCaffrey)
• Chapter Twenty-Four: “Isn’t All Oncology Hermeneutic?” (Nancy J. Moules, David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey, & Christopher Brown)
• Chapter Twenty-Five: “They Are All with Me”: Troubled Youth in Troubled Schools (Allan Donsky )
• Chapter Twenty-Six: Happiness in Bricks (Alexander C. Book)
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: Suffering “Like This”: Interpretation and the Pedagogical Disruption of the Dual System of Education (Christopher Gilham)
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: Morning Thoughts on Application (David W. Jardine)
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: In Praise of Radiant Beings (David W. Jardine)
• Contributor Bios
• References
• Index