From the curriculum standpoint, the teacher may encourage the high performer to abandon the issues of the struggling student and focus upon his or her personal achievements and accomplishments. Be civil; be respectful; even be friendly, but first of all take care of yourself and learn as much as you can to demonstrate your higher abilities and performance level. This is not the course that I took, nor do I advocate for this position.
As a holistically inclined teacher, I believe that I am responsible for facilitating the growth and development of functioning, responsible, and capable individuals who will choose willingly to contribute to society for the good of that society or community. Even from a philía stand point, cooperation is important as a quality that moves the individual away from the pure narcissism of individual acquisition and toward the need to assist others. This cooperation improves the survival of each individual by banding with others to assist in the protection and assistance for all members of the group. From a narcissistic point of view, providing assistance to others is dependent upon profits for the self. The narcissist is motivated only by personal gain.
From a holistic point of view, the teacher facilitates cooperation over narcissism. My quick response to this student’s defense of a less than perfect score because he or she was assisting a more needy fellow student would be to highly praise this individual for helping his fellow student. I would congratulate this student while pointing out how significant his or her efforts were to improving scores of his low-performing peer. He or she should be proud of the consequences of his or her efforts. However, this would be only half of the lesson I would teach and reinforce. I would also talk with this student about the responsibility attached to being talented or smart or strong, etc. The strong have a responsibility to assist or to protect the weak from bullies. No matter how strong you are, or think you are, there is always someone else who is stronger. It is highly probable that someday each individual in the group will be helped by the group as a whole. There is also a situation that may occur in which a group of weaker individuals who act cooperatively may collaborate to defeat the individual who is strong but not as strong as a cooperating group of individuals.
Society’s need for cooperation over personal gain and how bullies make their targeted victims feel intimidated, fearful, and sad will lead into a lesson about the benefits to the individual and to the community when individuals abide by a natural inclination toward reciprocity. Continuing with lessons about mutual reciprocity, I would feel the need as a holistic teacher to conference with the lower-performing student about his or her relationship with the higher-performing student. I would investigate with this student what personal strengths could be used to enhance the situation of his or her higher-performing tutor. A self-confident, brave, and holistic teacher would set his or her focus upon a general class discussion on how students could assess their strengths and weaknesses such that their strengths could be reciprocally used with each other for the mutual good and improvement of the whole class. Such a reflection would actually be robust enough to become a subject of study in itself. This would certainly be the case in an educational institution built upon agápē principles.
Additionally, the point must be made to the high-performing student that learning probably comes easily for him or her whereas learning might be much more of a challenge for the lower-performing student. Since learning comes more easily for the high performer, with just a little more time studying at home, he or she could score a perfect test while maintaining assistance to his or her teammate. A job well done all around! This would be the goal for an educational institution infused with agápē inclinations or aspirations. It was my experience that many high performers learned quickly and with far less effort than many average students who had to work harder to get higher scores. Good grades came easily and more leisure time was commonplace for many high performers. I would investigate to surmise if this was the case for this particular high performer. If it was, then losing a small amount of his or her leisure time at home to attain perfect scores was not an unreasonable request for the purpose of helping a teammate while also achieving a new level of self-improvement.
It was my experience that teachers must learn how to balance two competing choices: Do I teach the curriculum or do I attend to the teachable moments as they arise? Teachable moments are priceless because students have unknowingly maneuvered themselves into situations which have motivated them to learn about the particulars of that situation. These are important, priceless moments because the student has become self-motivated to learn which heightens their attentiveness.
How the situation of this high performer in this heterogeneously structured team is handled determines whether or not agápē affects the educational or the learning institution. We can now entertain the evaluation of agápē existence helping or hindering the survival of the individual and/or the community. If the intention of high performers is to do their best, learn as much as they can, gain all of the educational accolades that they can, and not worry about anyone else, then agápē has no influence whatsoever. Such instruction that shuns agápē reality is by omission the facilitation and possible development of narcissism. It is an interesting reflection to note that a teacher can facilitate the development of cooperation while also appealing to the narcissist by highlighting that cooperating would be in the narcissist’s best interest for personal gain — as the community gains so the probability for personal gain increases for that potential narcissist.
If, however, the teacher decides to reinforce the behavior of assisting a struggling student by showcasing the high-performing student’s value to the team and the class as a whole for helping other students while maintaining his or her high performance, then agápē reality is being demonstrated, modeled, praised, and taught through the “learn-by-doing” approach. Is this beneficial to the individual and/or the community at large? The answer depends on how the following question is resolved: “What would be the general atmosphere of society if the individuals in the community were all narcissists?” I am remembering my previous statement that agápē is the antithesis of narcissism.
Teaching cooperation is a movement away from narcissism which is at the core of érōs, and, yes, agápē can be taught as well, but cooperation and agápē can only be truly learned in a learn-by-doing environment that facilitates a need to cooperate in such a fashion that acting cooperatively aids all students. In fact, learning as many philía characteristics as possible (kindness, honesty, respect, tolerance, truthfulness, and gentleness, etc.) creates an enriched readiness atmosphere for truly learning an experience of agápē.
I strongly believe that my path to truly understanding agápē was through learning as many philía characteristics via the learn-by-doing situations propagated by my experiences through puberty, dating, going steady, pinning, courtship to engagement, engagement to marriage, marriage to divorce and divorce to remarriage. Along the way my consciousness developed, expanded, and matured as I became more aware of the benefits of each characteristic enhancing and enriching an active involvement in philía. My path was haphazard. Teaching is not haphazard, but can an individual teach something about which the student is completely naive? Yes, but situations that facilitate experiencing a reality of which the student is absolutely naive is paramount to the success in such teaching. If an educational institution wants to embrace the infusion of agápē into its daily routine, then that institution must hire at least some individuals who have a true understanding of agápē. That would only be a starting point. Such an institution would need to continue developing the full involvement of the complete staff in modeling agápē as well as monitoring and developing structural components infused with philía and agápē characteristics and qualities.
Along the spectrum which spans érōs to agápē, I have met parents that were functioning at the lower end of philía experiences. Given my experience and understanding, developing an educational institution actively infused with agápē realities would require a special situation in which 1) a handbook needs to be compiled which clearly describes the value system of the functional application of philía and agápē characteristics on a daily basis, and 2) a signature by all parties in that handbook designating the handbook as an agreed upon contract. Such an educational institution would only be obliged to educate those students who signed the handbook above the signatures of the parents or guardians and the administrator of said school. Below these signatures would be a statement clearly indicating that the student would forfeit the right to be educated at said institute if the handbook was not followed or the parents or guardians refused to support the principles and prescripts presented in the handbook.
It was and is not my intention to write a full description of an educational institution built upon a foundation infused with agápē. Rather, the intention here, at this point in time, is to demonstrate how agápē realities influence decisions made within the educational milieu in which our children are nurtured to become fully functioning, self-actualized adults. To hypothetically build such an educational institution individually in its entirety would be an intellectual exercise. To do so would bring clarity to one’s personal thoughts on the matter, but building such an educational institution tangibly is a different matter. True ownership of an actualized educational institution, however, requires that the people who will be served by that potential institution and the people who will administer that potential institution confer with one another, plan with each other, and build that proposed educational institution together from the ground up. Such a feat requires cooperation and a shared consciousness among human beings with a vested interest in bringing about such a reality.