1. Ethics, Place and Environment,
Vol. 8, No. 3, 285–307, October 2005
Martin Buber: Educating
for Relationship1
SEAN BLENKINSOP
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
ABSTRACT This paper proposes that contained within Martin Buber’s works one can find useful
support for, and insights into, an educational philosophy that stretches across, and incorporates,
both the human and non-human worlds. Through a re-examination of his seminal essay
Education2, and with reference to specific incidents in his autobiography (e.g. the horse, his
family, the theatre and the tree) and to central tenets of his theology (e.g. the shekina, the
Eternal Thou and teshuvah) we shall present a more coherent understanding of Buber’s notion
of relationship which is developmental in nature and posits intrinsic, necessary and unavoidable
relational ties to both the human and non-human worlds. This understanding of Buber’s
view of relationship as a developmental process will add new meaning to his central ideas
of ‘bursting asunder’ the educational relationship and the educator who is cast ‘in imitatio
Dei absconditi sed non ignoti’.3 Ultimately this paper wants to suggest that, for Buber, the infant
is unable to become fully adult without being immersed in relationship and then coming to
full awareness of it, and it is the educator who can play a pivotal role in supporting the
development of this adult relationality through encounters with both individual humans and
the larger non-human world.
Introduction
After a descent during which I had to utilize without a halt the late light of
a dying day, I stood on the edge of a meadow, . . . I pressed my stick against
a trunk of an oak tree. Then I felt in twofold fashion my contact with being:
here, where I held the stick, and there, where it touched the bark. Appearing to
be only where I was, I nonetheless found myself there, too, where I found the
tree. At that time dialogue appeared to me. (Buber, 1964, p. 47)
Near the end of his life, Martin Buber, in conversation with Carl Rogers, regretted
not having discussed relationship beyond the one-on-one human interaction, and he
referred specifically to our relationship with nature (Buber, 1965, pp. 166–184).
However, Buber’s writings and his autobiography are copiously sprinkled with
Correspondence Address: S. Blenkinsop, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University
Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6. Canada. Email: sblenkin@sfu.ca
1366-879X Print/1469-6703 Online/05/030285–23 ß 2005 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13668790500348232

2. 286 S. Blenkinsop
references, encounters and key developmental moments with that more than human
world. These encounters in many ways became the triggers for Buber’s insights
into relationship and education. Buber’s goal of a more thoughtfully relational
world parallels many of the purported ‘relationship building’ goals of environmental,
experiential or outdoor education. Yet many of those same programmes often
bemoan what they perceive as limited change in those relationships by pointing to
limited change in the students’ behaviour, for example. I believe Martin Buber’s
understanding of relationship as being a developmental process offers insight into
this challenge, as well as a possible direction for educators and philosophers to begin
to consider, if we are to begin to build better and presumably more sustainable
relationships amongst humans and between humans and their natural environment.
But in order to fully expose this insight we must explore Buber’s religious writings.
Educators and educational theorists have tended to ignore the religious writings and
focus upon the educational writings (e.g. Education and Education of Character) and
his major examination of his philosophy of dialogue in I and Thou (Buber, 1970).4
It is through that exploration that we will be better able to understand Hasidism, the
belief system so fundamental to his life, and as a result better understand Buber’s
educational work, resolve some of the inconsistencies which seem to appear between
the educational interpretation of Buber and the religious Buber and make real
connections between his work and the practical work of supporting students
in building relationships with their world.
I am proposing to re-examine the essay Education in the light of Buber’s biography
and his Hasidism. Thus, the first section of this paper will focus on his biography,
predominantly three moments of deep encounter with the natural world that seem
important, as triggers, to his relational development. The second section will focus
on three key ideas, shekina, teshuvah and shiflut, drawn directly from Buber’s
understanding of Hasidism. The third section, in examining the Primitive Thou, the
I/Thou and the I/Eternal Thou, will offer a more complete groundwork for what
appears to be a relational developmentalism. These three sections will then provide
us with adequate grounding for the fourth section, which will offer a new
interpretation of Education and add to the idea of relationship building and aptitude
as being developmental that I have discussed in previous work (Blenkinsop, 2004a,
b). The hope is that this discussion will assist educators and theorists not only in
understanding Buber, by offering a theoretical underpinning to relationship, but also
in the real process of developing relationship with students. Beyond this is the hope
that this discussion will confirm, or ignite, the recognition that the world beyond the
human sphere is a necessary component of becoming more fully human and offer
some insight into how that process of relational development occurs.
Animal, Mineral and Vegetable: Becoming Martin Buber
Buber’s autobiographical, theological and relational writings are littered with
experiences and examples of relation with the more than human world. This section
will present three specific instances, one each from childhood, early adulthood and
maturity, which Buber himself pointed to as being pivotal to understanding himself
as relational and to expanding his theoretical work. There are many other examples,
beyond these three, that could be drawn upon, including literature, the theatre,

3. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 287
marriage and a myriad more animals, vegetables and minerals. The development
of a theory of relationship follows quite closely the steps that Buber followed in his
own life and relies heavily on his experiences with caregivers and the world
around. The challenges of the intellect, the importance of the word, the experience of
mysticism and of its limitations and the recognition that he belonged to the real
world, but with the potential to reach out to God through the Eternal Thou, were
significant encounters on his educational journey to his mature work. This section
will provide an initial sense of the developmental process of relationship that was
so influential in Buber’s own education.
At age 11 Buber had an encounter that was fundamental to his understanding
of Thou and Eternal Thou. He tells of sneaking into his grandparents’ barn in order
to stroke a horse, and continues:
[I] felt the life beneath my hand, it was as though the element of vitality itself
bordered on my skin, something that was not I, was certainly not akin to me,
palpably the other, not just another, really the Other itself; and yet it let
me approach, confided itself to me, placed itself elementally in the relation
of Thou and Thou with me. (Buber, 1967, p. 38)
For Buber this moment became even more significant, because he recognized that the
experience ceased the instant he became conscious of his own hand.
It is early experiences such as this, coming as moments of clarity and a profound
sense of connection, which Buber will remember as he builds his philosophy of
relationship. As we shall see later, Buber came to realize that this experience with
the horse was in fact a moment of relation between I 5 and the Eternal Thou,
a moment of discovery that each human has the ability and responsibility to connect
with the more than human temporal world and make it sacred by raising it into the
eternal. Thus the relation of I/Thou becomes an existence encompassing both I and
Thou but existing between two individuals and ‘imitates’, in a human way, the
I/Eternal Thou which is the desired relationship of humanity and Buber’s God.
This is also why Buber’s recognition of ‘his’ hand destroys the relationship because
he tries to contain something within I that only exists between I and Thou.
In his essay Education, Buber discussed his sense that each human comes equipped
with an instinct for communion and that it is up to the educator to both sanction
that instinct and provide opportunities for it to flourish. Buber called this ‘inclusion’,
which, unlike empathy, ‘does not mean giving up one’s own side of the relationship’.
The ability to see the other, understand and embrace6 the other without giving up the
self is the true penetration of being, true dialogue, the I/Thou (Buber, 1969, p. 12).
It is this skill of inclusion that we will see repeated as we examine the educator’s
role in the asymmetrical relation.
As an educated young adult Buber found himself sought after to answer questions
of importance to his community. He was overwhelmed by the seeming responsibility
and, remembering some of his childhood encounters with the natural world,
he turned towards mystical scholasticism as a possible source of understanding.
The story that Buber tells most often with respect to the mystical experience
comes from his book Daniel.

4. 288 S. Blenkinsop
On a gloomy morning I walked upon the highway, saw a piece of mica lying,
lifted it up and looked at it for a long time; the day was no longer gloomy, so
much light was caught in the stone. And suddenly as I raised my eyes from it,
I realized that while I looked I had not been conscious of ‘object’ and ‘subject’;
in my looking the mica and ‘I’ had been one; in looking I had tasted unity.
(Buber, 1964, p. 140)
This moment of unity between the temporal realm and God’s eternal realm, which
Buber saw as an ecstatic moment, is a moment of relationship that arrives, unforced,
as a blinding insight for the individual. For Buber this moment can precipitate the
more conscious search for relationship in the world.
I looked at it [the mica] again, the unity did not return. But there it burned in
me as though to create. I closed my eyes, I gathered my strength, I bound
myself with my object, I raised the mica into the kingdom of the existing.
And there, . . . I first was I. (Buber, 1964, p. 140)
Buber lost the ecstatic sense of unity because, as with the awareness of his own
hand in the episode of the horse, he began to reflect consciously and returned to the
sense of the objective ‘I’, but because of having been through the experience there
had been a change in the relationship between himself and the mica. Buber saw the
object, in this case the mica, as ‘hallowed’, made sacred, as if it has been gilded
through the ecstatic experience. From now on the gilded object can act as a portal
back into the I/Thou moment and beyond into the I/Eternal Thou, where the
individual first discovered I. That is to say first discovered the new I, the I in
relationship. Buber believed that there is a moment of insight and revelation when
the individual becomes conscious, and this implies consciousness of oneself in
relationship with God through His temporal immanence. The ecstatic moment
and the I/Thou and I/Eternal Thou implicit therein provide the insight that is able
to propel the individual into the process of ‘turning’ into the conscious process of
becoming oneself. Thus, the individual becomes engaged in several parallel projects
of unification at once. He is unifying the self by consciously making it coherent with
respect to his own project whilst also, through relationship, unifying all within the
temporal realm, a unity Buber calls tikkun,7 in order to make it coherent with respect
to God. This idea will influence our understanding of both the role of the teacher and
the project of humanity as we examine Education. Looking back on his life Buber
would suggest that this mystical process of self-examination and self-reflection was
a phase he had to go through in order to become himself. This theme of personal
development, of building towards a more unified I, is a constant theme throughout
much of existential philosophy; what Buber is adding is relationship. The I becomes
more I through the conscious engagement with, and search for, relationship not only
with other individuals, but also with the more than human world beyond and,
ultimately, aims to reunite the temporal with the eternal in full relationship with the
Eternal Thou.
However, Buber’s encounters with the non-human did not end when he left
his mystical phase behind. They continued to occur and offer insight throughout his

5. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 289
adult life for both his philosophy of relationship and his life. His writing, both
biographical and philosophical, continued to offer numerous moments of encounter.
As an older man Buber described encounters with a tree outside his window and with
a cat in his study and of how they helped him to understand more clearly the
pure other and to ‘perceive a breath of the Eternal Thou’ (Buber, 1970, p. 150).
‘What I encounter is neither the soul of the tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself ’
(Buber, 1970, p. 59). ‘The domesticated animal has not . . . received the gift of the
‘‘eloquent’’ glance from us, . . . what it has from us is only the ability . . . to turn this
glance upon us brutes’ (Buber, 1970, p. 145). It is moments such as these, in full
adulthood, that reminded Buber of the voice of the Eternal Thou within each possible
encounter and which lead us on to discuss his Hasidism in order to better understand
that voice.
Shekina, Teshuvah and Shiflut: Key Concepts from Buber’s Hasidism
Hasidism was the life-blood of Buber’s understanding of reality and to ignore it is
to compromise what Buber has to offer education. He acknowledged that by 1905,
after his movement through and out of mysticism, ‘the Hasidic tradition had grown
for me into the supporting ground of my own thinking’ (Buber, 1967, p. 118). The
purpose of this section is to draw several issues out of Buber’s Hasidic writing that
will help us to understand both the connections he made to biographical encounters
and the presence of his religious ideas in his essay Education. It is useful to remember
that, although the religious language may seem challenging, the goal is to translate
Buber’s understanding into a useful educational philosophy and not to proselytize
for a religious position. The first Hasidic concept we will examine is the shekina,
which might in fact be the conceptual reason for Buber’s focus upon relationship and
his understanding thereof.
Shekina: The Divine Indwelling
No thing can exist without a divine spark. (Buber, 1958a, p. 49)
The sparks which fell down from the primal creation into the covering shells
and were transformed into stones, plants, and animals. (Buber, 1958a, p. 37)
The Hasidic concept of the shekina recalls an Ojibwa story. Once upon a time the
world was black, without any colour. The only exception was during rainstorms
when the sun shone and two perfect, parallel rainbows would appear. Now, of
course, the animals and plants were intrigued by this brilliant colour and so one day
Raven decided to investigate and flew off towards the rainbows. Raven ended up
flying too close and managed to fly into the upper rainbow, shattering it into an
infinite number of pieces which cascaded all over the Earth transforming everything
they landed upon. This is why there is colour on the Earth, why Raven remains black
and why, on some perfect rainbow days, you can see the remains of a second rainbow
just above the first.

6. 290 S. Blenkinsop
There are two aspects to Buber’s God. The first, like the intact rainbow, is
God’s own eternal completeness that exists ‘above’, whilst the second is the
‘shattered’ unity, the shekina, the ‘exiled glory of God’ (Buber, 1958a, p. 81) that is
spread out in little pieces within each and every animal, vegetable and mineral on this
temporal Earth, and that piece of the shekina ‘burns’ within each one. In Hasidism
people are responsible for finding, drawing forth and ‘re-connecting’ these scattered
pieces and they must approach every object with the intent of uncovering that
spark, uniting it with their own and, ultimately, uniting all the sparks and returning
them to God. This is the process of consciously turning ourselves into
relationship with the Eternal Thou, of hearing the voice of the spark within and of
reaching out to embrace and connect with each spark-filled entity we encounter.
In many ways this is the process, in less poetic terms, we will see the teacher imitating
as she/he thoughtfully reaches out to engage each student and creates the world
which surrounds them in the hope that they will hear the voice of relationship
she/he is offering and decide to turn themselves towards that voice. Once the process
of trying to engage in relationship has begun this will help students to both see and
take the risk to begin the project of becoming an I. Unfortunately, sparks can be
hidden through both ignorance and choice, and this creates a prison, a shell,
around people.
The sparks are to be found everywhere. They are suspended in things as in
sealed-off springs; they stoop in the creatures as in walled-up caves, they inhale
darkness and they exhale dread; they wait. (Buber, 1958a, p. 103)
‘The good is held captive in the shells’ (Buber, 1958a, p. 221) and, as happened when
Buber experienced the mica, the spark is released through the genuine encountering
of the other. At that moment of insight and connection dialogue is occurring. This
means there is good, ‘that of God within’, in everyone and even if the spark is
encased in a thick shell, our challenge is to break through and release it. If at first you
don’t succeed, try harder, use more love.
Buber saw self-deception as one of the key components in creating these prisons
that become major obstacles to one’s chosen direction, and it is precisely this that
elicits the voice of relationship and, if heard, can lead to insight. This voice parallels
God’s question to Adam: ‘Where art Thou?’
You yourself are Adam, you are the man whom God asks: ‘Where art
thou?’ . . . In so asking, God does not expect to learn something he does not
know; . . . he wants to produce an effect in man which can only be produced
by just such a question, provided it reaches man’s heart. . . . Adam hides
himself to avoid rendering accounts to escape responsibility for his way of
living. . . . This question is designed to awaken man and destroy his system of
hideouts; it is to show man to what pass he has come and to awake in him the
great will to get out of it. (Buber, 1958a, p. 134)
God originally calls out to Adam and Eve, not because he can’t find two people
hiding in the bushes, but to have us recognize that we are all hiding. It is the look

7. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 291
of Buber’s cat, the call of ‘Where art thou?’ that acts as a trigger to initiate the process
of self-examination and to determine what point one has reached in the
project of self-realization. But the voice of the Eternal Thou, although ever present,
is not ‘a thunderstorm which threatens man’s very existence; it is a ‘‘still small voice’’
and easy to drown’ (Buber, 1958a, p. 134).
In many ways Buber’s idea of shekina, as it relates to the teaching/learning
situation, has shifted the onus onto the teacher to continue to seek the good within
all students. It is not acceptable to simply assume any particular student is ‘all bad’
and walk away; the challenge is developing the ‘love’ which will help to come to
understand the student and get through his shell. Believing there is good within all
will also change the way we encounter our students and increase our responsibility
towards them. The individual cannot hide from the world nor shun others, for the
task of humankind is to seek out the shekina and form connections. Buber saw this as
Avoda, ‘the service of God in time and space’ (Buber, 1958a, p. 84), and it is through
service that individuals can bind together.
He who lives with others in this way realizes with his deed the truth that all
souls are one; for each is a spark from the original soul, and the whole of the
original soul is in each. (Buber, 1958a, p. 121)
This binding occurs both in a temporal way, as a community consciously comes
together, and in an eternal way, as released sparks re-form the shekina. Baal–Shem
tells a story of a man who could see a beautiful bird at the top of a tree and, although
no one else could see it, the people came together to form a human ladder in order to
retrieve the bird (Buber, 1958a). If any one of them had not been involved, the task
would have failed. Just as the task of coming to God through the shekina involves
everyone serving that goal, so too Buber’s idea of community requires a common
goal and the involvement of all as distinct individuals. In this way ‘help is no virtue,
but an artery of existence’ (Buber, 1958a, p. 120). It is in this way that the teacher
becomes responsible for both genuine leadership and genuine community. Many
times the teacher sees the ‘bird’ and it is up to her/him to have the students release
it as their common goal.
The teacher in the classroom is immersed in the real world, what Buber might
call ‘God’s immediacy’, and knows that awareness only occurs when students open
themselves to one another and to the world around. The teacher’s job is very much
that of facilitating those relationships, that dialogue, and thus of helping to bring
together the broken rainbow that is the shekina.
Teshuvah: Conversion
Earlier we discussed Buber’s personal experience of ‘conversion’, the moment when
he abandoned mysticism and became the advocate of existence and the philosopher
of dialogue. However, Buber used the word conversion in a very specific way:
conversion signified a total reorientation of one’s existence that is not instantaneous
but is an ongoing process involving hard, thoughtful work. True dialogue,
relationship, requires both grace, since it can’t be simply willed into existence,

8. 292 S. Blenkinsop
and that the other person also enter the relationship. It also requires the individual
to struggle with and to create himself and to do this consciously and purposefully,
i.e. with intention, kavana.8
In today’s culture we love the stories of reformation: the poor man on drugs,
destroying his life and living on the street, who has a blinding insight and changes
into the upstanding father and paragon of virtue; the lost woman, living fast and
loose, who crashes her sports car and walks away, literally and metaphorically,
to become an aid worker. This is the stuff of Hollywood legend and, for
Buber, dangerously models the Christian conversion that he thinks makes the
difficult project seem too easy. Teshuvah, on the other hand, involves an individual
who, through self-awareness, understanding, effort and commitment, transforms
a hitherto pointless existence into a life directed to a meaningful goal. This
transformation Buber calls ‘turning’.
Turning is capable of renewing a man from within and changing his position.
. . . But turning means here something much greater than repentance and acts
of penance; it means that by a reversal of his whole being, a man who had
been lost . . . finds . . . a way to the fulfillment of the particular task. (Buber,
1958a, p. 164)
Teshuvah can’t happen without God’s presence, but it doesn’t happen accidentally.
Grace occurs precisely because one is consciously opening oneself to it. One cannot
will or force the I/Thou relationship into existence; grace must be present, but one
can prepare for it by means of deliberate thought and effort. Buber’s point, when
translated to educators, is that the idea of instantaneous change happening
miraculously is troublesome because it removes thoughtful intention, preparation
and awareness from the process. In some ways it absolves the teacher and the
individual of responsibility for change. Buber agreed that the moment of change, or
the moment of insight, can’t be forced into existence and must come from and to the
student, as if by grace, but that does not mean that we do nothing to prepare, to set
the stage consciously for when the moment arrives.
It is important for educators to understand that, for Buber, God’s relationship to
any individual parallels that of the teacher and the student. The educator is set in the
‘imitatio Dei absconditi sed non ignoti’ [imitation of a God hidden but not
unknown] (Buber, 1968a, p. 103) and so, by removing the religious language, we find
some educational guidelines. The teacher must always be present, be available
and reaching towards the student, proffering relationship, even if the student is
uninterested, unwilling or unable to consciously accept it. This is equally as
important before the moment of insight as it is thereafter, when the student may
begin certain tentative conscious responses. But the turning, the choosing, must come
from the student, just as God allows humans to choose. The process is not magical;
the teacher pushes, supports and challenges in whichever direction he thinks is
most helpful, while the student prepares, builds intention and the fervor which will
sustain him or her throughout the project. This process of taking up one’s own
becoming, of consciously engaging in one’s own project, requires the continual
support of the relationships in which we are immersed, but it also requires enormous

9. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 293
personal commitment and deepening personal insight. For the educator engaged
in the challenge of his own journey and supporting that of others there is a profound
need for humility.
Shiflut: Humility
He is truly humble who feels the other as himself and himself in the other.
(Buber, 1958a, p. 113)
Every individual is unique, and that uniqueness is ‘the essential good of man that is
given to him to unfold . . . in his own way’ (Buber, 1958a, p. 111). Buber’s notion
of humility is the ability to be oneself in one’s own uniqueness: ‘the haughty man is
not he who knows himself, but he who compares himself with others’ (Buber, 1958a,
p. 113). Humility is about becoming from within and translating that understanding
of self into action. Every individual can fulfil his task, thus all individuals are equally
important. When a child claims she/he, for example, is the best runner, she/he is
displaying haughtiness, unless she/he means by that that she/he is the best runner
she/he can be, that she/he is striving to do better than herself/himself and ‘overcome’
her/his own best time. For Buber, this is humility:
the man who presumes too much is the man who contrasts himself with others,
who sees himself as higher than the humblest of things, who rules with measure
and weights and pronounces judgment. . . . In him who is full of himself there
is no room for God. (Buber, 1958a, p. 114)
For educators this concept of shiflut raises challenges the very basis of our current
practices. If we are to teach and work in humility within our own projects and
honour the projects of our students we must recognize that when a student decides
to take up the challenge of her/his own becoming, it is not because we have made
her/him do so. She/he has decided, possibly through the experiences we have
made possible for her/him, to turn herself/himself towards relationship. Beyond that
it is humility that supports teachers as they shoulder the responsibility of forming
I/Thou relationships with students, monitor each individual project, deal with their
own self-deceptions and avoid the possibility of propaganda that Buber so wisely
warns us about in his essay Education.
Primitive Thou, I/Thou and I/Eternal Thou: Buber’s Relational Developmentalism
The mature Buber believed that life is relationship and he began I and Thou with
his primary distinction, the ‘two-fold attitude’, I/It versus I/Thou.
Man can treat the world . . . as an ‘It’—an orderly, comprehensible collection
of things of objects to be experienced and used . . . . When we behold
what confronts us in the world, we deal with it by treating it as an object
which can be compared and assigned a place in an order of objects, described

10. 294 S. Blenkinsop
and analyzed objectively, filed away in our memory to be recalled when needed.
(Buber, 1970, p. 90)
The I/It relationship lacks mutuality and takes place within the individual,
thereby separating subject from object, and not ‘between’ the individual and the
other. The I/It relationship objectifies and alienates the world that Buber believed
must be revered and related to. As we have seen, every individual is responsible for
connecting with the ‘spark’ within everything, both for the unification of the shekina
and because only in saying ‘Thou’ does the I truly come into being. In adopting
the ‘I/Thou’ attitude we are to enter the world of relation, a world characterized by
mutuality, directness, presentness, intensity and ineffability’ (Friedman, 1956, p. 95;
Hendley, 1978, p. 141).
Buber saw I/Thou paradoxically, as existing outside time and space, since it occurs
in ‘the actual and fulfilled present’ (Buber, 1970, p. 63) but lacks the detached I that
places the encounter into either time or space. However, this does not mean that
Buber is advocating a complete removal of the I/It. I/It and I/Thou operate in
concert and both have necessary functions, since we are living in a temporal world
and it is impossible to sustain oneself in the non-temporal. Everything happens in
reality and although there are moments when one glimpses the eternal, raises oneself
and the other into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou, the self continues
to exist in the here and now. Buber simply wants to refute the priority we give to the
I/It to the exclusion of I/Thou because, for him, that is the wrong path to take to
the self.
The I is different when it occurs in the I/It and the I/Thou, since I/Thou is not
within but ‘between’, which makes I a mutual construction rather than an internal
consciousness. For Buber the human is responsible for the temporal, however,
I/Thou occurs ‘in between’ and offers insight into the eternal through encountering
the other, entering relationship and engaging in dialogue. The self is illuminated
through history, personal work and the process of dialogue. A reality in which
relationship and dialogue exist between the individual and other people and between
the individual and the world beyond is neither completely within nor completely
outside the individual; it is what Buber meant by I/Thou and, ultimately, the
I/Eternal Thou.
In his essay Distance and Relation Buber (1951) began to explore how human
relations develop. He maintained that all children are born with the ability to relate
which, in the essay Education, he called the instinct for communion (Buber, 1968a,
p. 91). Very early children learn the ‘primal setting at a distance’, i.e. they learn
to separate themselves from objects, thereby creating an It. Thereafter follows the
‘entering into relation’. This means that relational ability, some form of Thou, must
be present before I/It, since ‘setting at a distance’ implies distance from something,
this initial form of Thou Buber calls the Primitive Thou. Buber believed that children
arrive as the ‘innate Thou’ (Buber, 1970, p. 78), with the ability for forming
relationships in ‘natural association’ (Buber, 1970, p. 76) and only later does the
need to distance oneself appear. This childhood ability to relate provides the
‘pre-reflective’ support that enables the more conscious adult to return to
relationship at a later time in life. Thus, all children are born in relation and need

11. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 295
to ‘regain/return’ to I/Thou consciously after ‘setting at a distance’ the world.
‘The process of becoming . . . is the movement between the attitude of I/Thou to I/It
and back to I/Thou’ (Koo, 1964, p. 114).
Buber claimed that, through such things as technology, science and institution-
alization, today’s world is in a situation of ever increasing ‘I/It-ness’, moving farther
from relation. Though we live constantly within potential reach of the Thou and it is,
as Buber said, always ‘coming towards us and touching us’, yet we ‘have become
inept and uneager for such living intercourse’ (Buber, 1970, p. 92). However, there is
hope, since ‘all of these Thou’s which have been changed into It’s have it in their
nature to change back again into presentness’ (Friedman, 1960, p. 63), a change
which can be accomplished by learning again to revere the world and its objects.
Inclusion, as Buber realized when watching the great Burgtheatre actors, means
that two things must come together; it means coming to know one another in
strengths and weaknesses, necessities and possibilities, and not losing the self.
Empathy, on the other hand, involves the individual ‘becoming’ the other and losing
oneself. It is in dialogue that I is discovered and deepened, because the other,
knowing our actuality and our project, can act as a mirror, a supporter and a
challenger; the other is able to ask ‘where art Thou?’ However, relationship requires
effort and confirmation. To confirm9 someone, which Buber failed to do in the case
of the young visitor who committed suicide, is to encounter him in his own
concreteness, and it occurs through ‘making present’, which ‘means to imagine quite
concretely what another . . . is wishing, feeling, perceiving, and thinking . . . it is
through this . . . that we grasp another as a self’ (Friedman, 1956, p. 97).
For Buber, the advent of the adult relationship and of the thoughtful engagement
with the I/Thou is not an end but another step on the path of lifelong conversion.
The process of bringing the actual self into alignment with the self that is aimed at,
as possibility, is a path that the individual must choose to take and that requires
a continual process of ongoing self-realization. This self-realization happens
through continuing relationship with others, increasing awareness of the Eternal
Thou and thoughtful community building and is practically manifest as individuals
take up their responsibilities both for building community (e.g. the shekina) and
because they recognize that the I only becomes clearer as more members are
embraced.
The I/Thou is experienced in those moments when we rise above the temporal
and catch sight, however momentarily, of what Buber called the ‘Eternal Thou’.
The briefest glimpse of God’s immanence, the momentary apprehension of shekina in
some everyday object, is an opportunity for us to be aware of the Eternal Thou. Just
as art or literature is the ‘word’ of the artists, the sign or symbol of their I/Thou
which they offer to us and which can, at times, cause us to reach out and encounter
the creator behind the word, so too is the mediated classroom the ‘word’ of the
teacher and the natural object the ‘word’ of God, the sign of the Eternal Thou which,
if we open ourselves to it, lets us enter into relationship with the Eternal Thou that
is always present in the world around us. However, coming to know this is not
‘a reward’ but the destination for one in the process of purifying his heart, clearing
out imperfections and discovering ever present goodness. God is continually present
and this ‘discovery’ is our revelation.

12. 296 S. Blenkinsop
Thus, I, I/Thou and I/Eternal Thou are inextricably related. A child is born with
the innate ability to form I/Thou relationships, but also to encounter the I/Eternal
Thou. However, the three realms do not consciously develop in concert. The I begins
to take shape through encounters with thoughtful, conscious caregivers who provide
the relationship that allows the child to explore. The child also begins to discover the
It as she/he begins to learn how to navigate within the objective world, at least
partially provided by the educator, internalizing her/his particular historical, social,
cultural and economic reality. However, if the child only discovers the I/It without
the I/Thou, she/he receives a dangerously non-mutual notion of I, since tools,
animals and even humans become mere objects without dialogue and the whisper of
possibility. This world of the I/It becomes just objects of knowledge, of religious
dogma or of passive consumption and the child is left unable to relate personally and
directly to the world, and her/his growth is thereby stunted.10
Under the auspices of a good mentoring relationship the child begins to recognize
experiences of Thou and to perceive the opening of new opportunities. It is here that
children truly begin to discover themselves, but also to encounter despair, since the
challenge of the new experience is such that they often react negatively and their own
inner conflict comes to the surface, with the result that they avoid their problems
rather than examine their inconsistencies. For example, risk taking (e.g. sports, sex,
drugs and criminal activities) increases as possibilities are tested: laws of the land,
let alone of gravity, are defied, freedom is asserted and values are challenged and
created. The individual, it is discovered, can make choices, but such risk taking is not
necessarily positive. Drug taking, suicide or rebellion can indicate a desire to test the
limits and to discover oneself or it can be a sign of wishing to avoid responsibility
even to the extreme of killing oneself, and it is for this reason that relationship is
all important.
Success or failure at this stage is essential to the process of self-discovery, which
may stall at a certain level, unless one can commit oneself more consciously to
relationships. More conscious work feeds the increased sense of self-awareness that,
in turn, helps to strengthen the ability to relate to others. Thus, the I and the I/Thou
develop in harmony and synergy within the protective care of the parent or teacher
who act, like God, at another level. When the ability to relate reaches a certain depth,
experiences of I/Eternal Thou begin to emerge and as the individual becomes more
conscious of this last level of relationship, I/Thou relationships are deepened and the
I is reinforced.
My point in discussing Buber’s Eternal Thou is not motivated by a concern with
Buber’s God or religious education of any kind, but with the idea that the individual
human is immersed in a larger community of some kind beyond the political and
social boundaries which we currently erect. This larger community is accepting of,
in relationship with, the individual, even if he does not even recognize its existence,
and the progression Buber outlines towards a deepening understanding of the I and
a better ability in one-on-one relationships occurs in concert with a growing
awareness of this larger connection to the world around. Buber’s image of the
shekina is simply one beautiful way of representing this idea of connection and
the concept encapsulates the active role humans must continue to play in bringing
that larger community together.

13. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 297
Imitating God and the Asymmetrical Relationship: Re-examining Education
Having highlighted key moments in Buber’s life and having examined more
specifically key ideas from Hasidism that play a monumental role in the development
of Buber’s philosophy, we can now turn to a discussion of Buber’s essay Education
(Buber, 1968a, pp. 83–103).11 Education was originally presented at a conference in
Heidelberg whose theme was ‘The Development of the Creative Powers in the Child’
and Buber began his speech by critiquing that theme in order to lay the appropriate
groundwork for his own sense of education. Buber believed that, far from developing
the creative powers, education begins with the presupposition of creative powers
already in existence. Buber described the newborn, that which we have already
described as the Primitive Thou, as ‘a creative event if ever there was one’ (Buber,
1968a, p. 83).
Buber’s critique is necessary for several reasons. The first is fundamentally
religious. Actual creation belongs to the realm of God, humankind does not so much
create as uncover and imbue meaning into that which they find. Thus, the child,
in first discovering 2 þ 2 ¼ 4 and then developing the aptitude to manipulate that
knowledge, is not creating anew so much as discovering that which was already
present. Remembering the teshuvah and the individual turning into relationship with
Eternal Thou in order to take up the project that is her/his unique path, we can see
that the individual uncovers the self in a personal process that seems creative and yet,
within the eternal sphere, is really the ‘grace’ of ‘beginning again and ever again’
(Buber, 1968a, p. 83).
This leads to Buber’s second reason for critiquing the development of creativity.
Buber is clear that all individuals are, in Kierkegaardian terms, both unique and
universal, a ‘myriad realities, but also one reality’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 83). By this,
Buber is acknowledging that each of us is born unique, grows up in a unique
situation and is presented with a limitless range of possibilities. And all of us share
this reality, the reality of having to discover and enact our existence, become
ourselves, fulfil the possibilities we have chosen, and it is here that the educator
becomes pivotal to each human project. The role of the educator is to assist these
unique, situated realities along the shared reality of becoming themselves. Here again
we see Buber envisioning a process occurring, one that is the same for all in that
all must uncover their individual paths and follow them.
Buber has set the groundwork for the reality with which education must concern
itself, and it is the reality of supporting so many people in their individual and yet
shared process, and his reason for critiquing the theme is to refocus education on
that task, since the creative powers for that are already present. For Buber each
Primitive Thou is a potential, ‘in every hour the human race begins again’ (Buber,
1968a, p. 83), a uniqueness that will change history by its very existence and will
impact on the situation into which future generations arrive. But Buber is not naı¨ ve,
he acknowledged both history and the situation into which we are born without
wanting to condemn us to it. Humans are not predetermined and, as such, arrive
with the powers of creativity, those with which to create themselves. As a result, the
role of the educator is critical, for it is she/he who will ‘strengthen the light-spreading
forces of the doers’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 84) and match the educational reality to that of
each child encountered within their historical situation and as a becoming project.

14. 298 S. Blenkinsop
Buber suggested that there are two key creative powers which exist innately in the
Primitive Thou and are involved in all learning. The first, the originator instinct, is
the wish to bring form, to do; ‘the child of man wants to make things’ (Buber, 1968a,
p. 85). It is not simply busyness, but an instinct to have ‘something arise that was not
there before’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 85), and this includes tearing down that which was in
order to reconstruct some else. In many ways Buber saw this process of the newborn
building, destroying and reconstructing as a simple physical manifestation of the
skills required to build, undo and build anew any life or community, physically,
ethically or metaphysically. The adult who is destroying and rebuilding is giving
form to his life and imbuing value into the skeletal frame of his existence. The
significance of the originator instinct for the educator is to ‘meet it’ and to assist that
instinct to grow into the passion, not lust or greed, which will give direction and
continuing renewal to individual in formation. It is not the instinct per se that is
important but the ‘educative forces’ that nurture it.
There is a second key instinct which is often ignored and which will play
an important role in understanding the process of Buber’s understanding of
relationship.
There are two forms, indispensable for the building of true human life, to which
the originative instinct, left to itself, does not lead and cannot lead: to sharing
in an undertaking and to entering into mutuality. (Buber, 1968a, p. 87)
The shared undertaking is the ‘true food of earthly immortality’ (Buber, 1968a,
p. 87) and is distinguished from individual achievement that is, no matter how
gratifying and celebrated, a ‘one-sided’ event. It is ‘only if someone grasps his
hand . . . as a fellow creature lost in the world, to be his comrade or friend or
lover . . . does he have an awareness and a share of mutuality’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 87).
The act of putting things together may help the child ‘to know its possibility, its
origin, and structure and connections’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 87), but it is the ‘instinct for
communion’ that allows the individual to build a life. For Buber every Primitive
Thou comes with the instinct not only to form themselves and the physical world they
encounter, but also to form relationships and to share projects with others, and it is
these two forms, relationship and shared projects, which arise through the instinct
to commune. Thus, the infant is, in one sense, born relational. For Buber the
instinct to commune is the assumed position prior to objectifying the world. As such,
early experiences of communion with both the natural world and with caregivers
become the groundwork, the means by which the instinct can flourish. It is also upon
these relational memories that the child/young adult will draw as she/he begins
to encounter Thou. The challenge then for educators is to allow as many of these
possibilities for communion to occur in order to sustain, exercise and develop the
instinct.
It is these two instincts, the solitary instinct of origin and the communal instinct
for relationship, which, when met and supported through the direction of education,
lead to the possibility of building a ‘true human life’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 87).
However, these two instincts are not the end of education, they are a necessary
presupposition for it, and it is through meeting and guiding these instincts that the

15. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 299
‘almost imperceptible and yet important influence begins—that of criticism and
instruction’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 88).
As the infant grows, Buber saw the I/It, the objectification of the world, becoming
a necessity. So, although the repercussions of this objectification of the world include
the fading of the child’s relational ability, this process of organizing the world,
working within the current physical and social limitations and using the commonly
accepted means and methods in order to discover and manipulate the objective
world, is absolutely required for survival. For Buber the child now focuses upon the
use of tools, which can range from a shovel or pencil to language, culture or even
other people. The hungry child finds ways to satisfy that need and begins to explore
and categorize the world around.
However, the educator must always be aware of the project that exists beyond the
simple manipulation of tools and the role the educator plays in supporting and
guiding those initial instincts towards the student’s decision to consciously take
up the project. So, Buber warned against current education that he suggested either
ignores communion, by using compulsion, or prioritizes ‘lower freedom’, which is
simply an ill-defined possibility, the capacity for growth. The focus underlying
education is towards ‘higher freedom’, which is growth itself and is the ‘soul’s
freedom of decision’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 90). But even this freedom is ‘the run before
the jump’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 91) without communion, for it is through communion
that we ‘become free’ in a process that removes one by one the things we lean on.
The child, said Buber,
is educated by the elements, by air and light and the life of plants and animals,
and he is educated by relationships. The true educator represents both; but he
must be to the child as one of the elements. (Buber, 1968a, p. 90)
The teacher must imitate the elements, must be consistent and always available
for, not hidden from, relationship, just like nature and the Eternal Thou. Thus,
the presence of the natural world, the Eternal Thou, is always required within the
educational setting, for one never knows when a ‘mica moment’ or a ‘horse moment’
might occur for a particular student. This also means that the educator must be
aware of those possibilities and able to give credence to them when they occur,
allowing, as best she/he can, for the possibility of those moments.
Buber believed that the educator, in imitation of God, is responsible for bringing
the world to the student; it is through the medium of the teacher that the student
encounters the world. Everything that is within the educational realm (i.e. the
curriculum, the physical environment and the person of the teacher) is part of
the student’s world and the teacher has made choices, thoughtfully or not, about the
presence thereof. In a sense the teacher is ‘creating’ a world, ‘touching’ every facet
and allowing for the possibility of relationship with herself if the student chooses to
connect. The classroom becomes the shattered rainbow of the teacher that every
student has the potential to encounter. If this is the case, then the teacher must be
thoughtful and aware of the world she/he is creating. For example, the teacher must
be aware of the ‘scale of values’ she/he is bringing to the student and make those
values present. She/he must be clear and constant and enact those values from

16. 300 S. Blenkinsop
a living situation with respect to the student. This responsibility that Buber places
on the educator is one of the reasons he disavows centralized or detached
academic systems. The thoughtful teacher must make education conscious and
willed, it is ‘a selection by man of the effective world’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 89), and the
teacher is a manifestation of the world she/he would wish to see without forgetting
the reality that is the students directly in front of her/him.
For Buber the educator must work with the students in the classroom, whoever
they might be, whatever their capacities. The teacher:
enters the school-room for the first time, . . . sees them crouching at the desks,
indiscriminately flung together, the misshapen and the well-proportioned,
animal faces, empty faces, and noble faces in indiscriminate confusion, like
the presence of the created universe; the glance of the educator accepts and
receives them all. (Buber, 1968a, p. 94)
It is the role of the educator to begin ‘the real process of education’ by
‘experiencing the other side’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 96), and this implies a profound
experience. Buber used the example of a man striking another and receiving
‘in his soul the blow which he strikes’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 96).12 The educator must
try to experience what it is to be the students, must ‘feel’ how her/his own actions
strike them and imagine herself/himself as those students. However, this can only
happen through inclusion, confirmation and trust. ‘Relation in education is one of
pure dialogue’ and trust ‘the most inward achievement of the relation in education’
(Buber, 1968a, p. 98). The educator must have ‘gathered the child into his life’
so that the ‘reality between them . . . is mutuality’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 98). For Buber
the teacher must love both the light and dark within their students: ‘to love light in
itself, and darkness towards the light’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 94). Here we see the human
role of bringing forth the spark that is within, of seeing the light of that spark and
then of allowing that spark to burn forth by breaking down the walls of darkness
which keep it from entering into relationship with other sparks. It is through
the connection of these sparks, through mutuality, that the students are able to begin
to discover themselves, and it is here that Buber sketched in what I believe to be the
steps by which the student must climb,13 with the support of an educator
and ongoing encounters with the environment, from the I/It towards the possibility
of the I/Thou.
The Asymmetrical Relationship: The Steps in the Teacher–Student Relationship
Buber identified three chief forms of relationship in the process towards the I/Thou:
the abstract dialogue, the asymmetrical relationship and the I/Thou relationship.
The first form of relation is ‘an abstract but mutual experience of inclusion’
(Buber, 1968a, p. 99). By this Buber meant a moment of illumination where one
becomes able ‘to acknowledge’ another person and the two individuals mutually
discover one another as being distinct but also as someone with whom they
can relate.

17. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 301
[They] have become aware that it is with the other as with ourselves, and that
what rules over us both is not a truth of recognition but the truth-of-existence
and the existence-of-truth of the Present Being. (Buber, 1968a, p. 99)
This is not complete inclusion, as Buber defined it, for it ignores the reality
of being and life, but it is the first taste of the possibility of relationship, the glory of
belonging and the conscious awakening of that instinct of communion. However,
this form of relation leaves out the full reality of the other person. It is more of
an intellectual discovery of the potential for relationship. The next two forms
‘proceed from the inclusion of this full reality’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 99).
It is the second step that Buber described as the asymmetrical relation. It is a
concrete ‘but one-sided experience of inclusion’ and it is ‘the relation of education’
(Buber, 1968a, p. 99). The asymmetrical relation traps the educator in a paradox
where what ‘is otherwise found only as grace, inlaid in the folds of life—the
influencing of the lives of others with one’s own life—becomes here a function and
a law’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 100). Teachers, imitating God, become the official purveyors
of grace, and Buber stressed that this role is dangerous, since it can lead the educator
to arbitrariness or propagandizing if the student’s reality is ignored. Here the teacher
becomes like the master actor. He describes the teacher’s role thus:
Without the action of his spirit being in any way weakened he must at the same
time be over there, on the surface of that other spirit which is being acted
upon—and not of some conceptual, contrived spirit, but all the time the wholly
concrete spirit of this . . . unique being who is living and confronting him,
and who stands with him in the common situation of ‘educating’ and ‘being
educated’. (Buber, 1968a, p. 100)
The educator must attempt to stand at both ends of the common situation, for the
student is unable to do so at this point in the process of self-discovery. It takes
a thoughtful educator to sense the nuances of the student’s sensibility14 and to pick
up changes while at the same time offering experiences, allowing the originator
instinct and providing instruction. So, rather like a parent who monitors a toddler at
the beach, the teacher watches over the student, allowing him to experience, risk and
discover without being aware of the protection. And this is just the beginning of
an ongoing process whereby the child must become aware, must discover
herself/himself, must become conscious of the nature and significance of relation-
ships and must be able to offer support to others.15 Ultimately the educator is
striving to do herself/himself out of a job:
in the moment when the pupil is able to throw himself across and experience
from over there, the educative relationship would be burst asunder.
(Buber, 1968a, p. 101)
At this point the educator is no longer a guide but a friend, because the child is
now able to truly enter into ‘the third form of the dialogical relation, which is based
on a concrete and mutual experience of inclusion. It is the true inclusion of one

18. 302 S. Blenkinsop
another by human souls’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 101), and it is the final step in progression
towards the I/Thou, although the teacher is still only the imitator of God and
the process must continue in what is likely to be another asymmetrical relation
where we, as students, need to gain insight into relationship and the Eternal Thou is
the teacher offering relationship. Arrival at the I/Thou is an important goal for
Buber’s education and for what Buber understood life to be. It is important that
educators do not get confused here. Buber was not suggesting that education only
occurs when the dynamic of the asymmetrical relationship is in place. What he was
suggesting was that we are to support children into adulthood, into true dialogue,
at which point the educational relationship becomes a more mutual process.
This mutuality is not an asymmetrical relationship but a coming together of two
individuals as equals in dialogue, who are then able to act as support to each other
and facilitate each other’s learning. Presumably they are able to challenge and to
commune in ways that were beneficial to their separate projects and to the shared
project of their relationship.
Before leaving the teacher–student relationship we should mention the role of
the teacher as facilitator. Having entered a relationship with a student the teacher
gets a sense of the student’s needs and the direction he/she is likely to take in life.
It is the teacher’s responsibility to choose ‘the forces of the world which the child
needs for the building up of his substance’ (Buber, 1968a, p. 101). Thus, the educator
becomes a facilitator and a foil for providing the child with what it needs, when
it needs it.
The educator is set now in the midst of the need which he experiences in
inclusion, but only a bit deeper in it. He is set in the midst of the service, only a
bit higher up, which he invokes without words; he is set in the imitatio Dei
absconditi sed non ignoti. (Buber, 1968a, p. 103)
The educator must never forget that even the relational neophyte has the ability
to teach us something. Even if the asymmetrical relationship is burst asunder, the
project is not at an end and, as Buber suggested, ‘our students teach us, our works
form us. . . . How are we educated by children, by animals! Inscrutably involved, we
live in the currents of universal reciprocity’ (Buber, 1970, p. 67). As teachers we may
be more adept and aware of relationship, but we are by no means static or complete.
Buber ended his essay Education claiming that the educator acts ‘in imitation of
a God hidden but not unknown’. The teacher acts like God as she/he offers
relationship to those who are so young that they are unaware of the offer being made
and then she/he allows that relationship to change and grow as the student climbs,
becoming more able to recognize relationship and becoming more fully I. The
teacher is helping the student realize himself/herself and, in the process, hoping to see
the educational relationship ‘burst asunder’. Buber saw the teacher in a position not
of ‘making’ things happen, but of bringing the world to the student, of allowing
for the possibility of encounters with that world, of providing support, of offering
relationship and of meeting the students where they are. The teacher’s job is to allow
for, and enter into, relationship, to be more thoughtful about the interaction and
to be conscious about the notion of inclusion. However, the teacher can only do

19. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 303
her/his best, accepting the fact that in entering this relationship with the student
she/he will discover more about herself/himself, come closer to her/his own unity
and, thereby, become better able to support the next student.
Conclusion
The purpose of taking a new and careful look at Buber’s work is to acknowledge that
there is an ecological relationship in which we are immersed and that this
relationship, although often unseen and unacknowledged, is fundamental to
our humanity and to education. The Eternal Thou is one representation of the
kind of relationship I am pointing at. Buber believed that the discovery and
development of one’s relationship to this larger unity, or connective web, in which we
exist affects our ability to develop better relationships with the more than human
world around us. For Buber we are not fully human unless we allow our dual
instincts of creation and communion to flourish. If he was correct, this means that
educators must become very aware of the world; the teacher needs to consider what
she/he is placing in the classroom and the classroom itself, needs to allow for the
possibility of encountering that world, needs to wrestle with questions of natural
versus synthetic as she/he collects educational materials for her/his students and
must be able to answer for her/his decisions.
Schools and parents must also face the question of green space and whether or
not a person’s ability to make connections to the larger world is impeded by a layer
of tarmac over the landscape. Is climbing a plastic structure in a gymnasium
a qualitatively different experience from that of climbing a tree in an autumn forest?
Beyond this Buber argued that this process of being thoughtful, reverential, of the
materials and tools that we use helps to reconnect this shattered rainbow, and one
wonders if that can be augmented through allowing students to more fully
understand the tools and materials they use. For example, the food in the grocery
store comes from a seed that has been sown in the tilled and cultivated earth and
nurtured into existence to be plucked at the appropriate time. I believe that
experiencing this process would change the ability of the student to have a sense of
reverence for that food. Ultimately, Buber’s mandate to educators in this object filled
world is to be more thoughtful, more aware of nature and of how it is connected
to you and the students.
The educational implications of this paper are varied and presumably reach each
reader in different ways. For example, Buber’s concept of shiflut and the individual
nature of each of our projects challenge the very basis of our current competitive
practices. Grading on a bell curve seems to implicitly accept that one individual
is better than another, while validating a centralized evaluation system whose
objectivity is both dubious and gross and which fails to take into account how
specific individuals are progressing with respect to themselves. There is also a call for
the teacher to be aware of each student in a historical situation and deal with the
reality that confronts that student without condemning the student to remain in that
situation. However, these ideas are not new, it is this framework for relational
development that is.
Buber’s construction of the development of relationship is important not solely for
environmental education, but to education as a whole. His is neither a call for more

20. 304 S. Blenkinsop
environmental education classes and courses focused on ecological and social
justice nor is it a call to more thoughtfully spread these issues throughout the
curriculum. For Buber, to live fully is to be in relationship and to have the ability to
exercise thoughtfully our instincts to form and to commune, and as such it is the
core or essence of education itself, it is the fundamental way we should think
about education. The educator, in imitating God, has the opportunity and the
responsibility to assist students to discover I, and in so doing support them as they
begin the challenge of life. Communion with other humans and with the world
around is necessary throughout our lives. As young children it supports our innate
proclivities, as developing children it gives us moments of insight into the possibility
of relationship and into clarity with respect to I, and as adults communion allows us
to become more fully human and to take up the responsibility of building community
in the present and for the next generation. If we accept Buber’s idea, then we need
to become more active in, and aware of, the development of our relationships so as
to become the means for the possible renewal of the world, as Buber so eloquently
stressed. Practically this means that educators must be as thoughtful as possible
about the world they are bringing to the student. A genuine and consistent world
‘touched’ by the teacher that might allow the possibility of those moments of insight
and that is able to support an individual project once chosen or a relationship
once turned to. Here we must remember that the non-human, particularly nature,
might be the better teacher, both because it is unobfuscated, a pure other like Buber’s
cat, and because it is a part of the shattered rainbow, the quiet voice of the
Eternal Thou that the teacher is trying to imitate.
As we have seen, Buber’s encounters with the non-human environment were
so significant that they shaped him and led him to emphasize similar kinds
of encounters for the child in his essay Education. However, it was not strictly the
encounters that were important, but that the encounters allowed him to see the
possibility of relationship and to see the I with more clarity. As a result, Buber did
not want us to objectify nature, to approach nature in the one-directional
monological way of I/It, but to understand that any approach to a specific object
holds with it the possibility of engaging with the Eternal Thou situated within, the
shekina. This is because the self is discovered and nurtured by means of continually
more reflective and conscious relationships, so that the individual becomes a person
‘in between’ others, as Buber sid.
With this perspective firmly in mind, educators can select a range of experiences
for their learners to enhance the opportunity of forming relationships with other
humans, the natural world and encountered objects, such as literature and art.
However, just as the teacher cannot force a student to turn to a relationship or to
learn, so the impetus for relationship with the non-human world remains with each
of us. The educator then offers relationship both in the model that he/she presents to
students and in the form of the environment he/she selects in order to help the child
move from the Primitive Thou through the I/It objectification of the world to the
possibility of bursting asunder the asymmetrical relationship in order to allow the
I/Thou to develop and the individual to embark on his project and the task of
rebuilding community here in the reality of the temporal world.
Ultimately, I think it is the development of relationship that affords the
most significant contribution to the educational discussion. As a framework it

21. Martin Buber: Educating for Relationship 305
offers an opening for educators to see themselves contributing to the larger project
of building more fulfilled human lives for students and a more thoughtfully
generated community. It also undercuts several of the practical difficulties
educators have that I mentioned at the beginning of this paper. It begins to generate
a theoretical underpinning into which educators can tap and offers a way to explain
the challenges many educators encounter between the transfer of information and
the lack in change of behaviour. If education is to focus upon the development of the
communal instinct of the individual through the use of instruction and direction,
then it might be possible to discuss the community that we are hoping to become.
This would be a community that allows the individual to develop because
relationship is allowed to develop.
Notes
1
Education was originally presented at the Third International Educational Conference, Heidelberg,
Austria 1925. The conference subject was ‘The Development of the Creative Powers in the Child’.
In Buber, M. (1968a) Between Man and Man, R.G. Smith (trans.), Macmillan, New York.
2
As above.
3
Translated as ‘In imitation of a God hidden but not unknown’.
4
Educational philosopher Maxine Greene has pointed out that, prior to this, nobody had brought
elements of Buber’s Hasidism directly into the educational conversation (personal communication,
2004). Other authors (Friedman, 1956; Gordon, 1973, 1986; Grob, 1985) have read and made
reference to Buber’s theological literature, but none explicitly used Hasidic concepts directly from
that literature in support of their educational discussions. The earliest projects (Friedman, 1956;
Winetrout, 1963) were useful overviews that understated Buber’s theology. Scudder (1968, 1971 &
1975) lacked the religious underpinnings and caused what appears to be a common misinterpreta-
tion of the educational, asymmetrical relationship, making it dangerously static and authoritarian.
Although this position has spawned lively debate (Kiner, 1969; Gordon, 1973; Wingerter, 1973),
none of the respondents, although assuming different positions, dealt with either Buber’s Hasidism
or with the educator as acting in imitation of God or the developmental nature of the educational
relationship. More recently Buber has been examined with respect to notions of care (McHenry,
1997) and of the environment, and yet these works are still predominantly based in his secular
literature.
5
Please note that in order to achieve clarity I am suggesting that an italicized I will serve as an
indicator of Buber’s I, the I of relationship, and not the I of the author.
6
Buber often uses this image of the embrace to signify relationship. He sees the embrace
metaphorically, two people coming together holding each other without dissolving into one
another.
7
Buber distinguishes tikkun from other traditions. He sees Vedantic philosophy as a non-dual search
for unity with everything ultimately dissolving into one. Buber’s unity is non-dual but multivariate,
meaning unity involves many coming together as one but remaining distinct therein, hence the
importance of individual uniqueness.
8
Kavana, or intention, is not solely the conscious intentions of the mind (kavanot) but also requires
the ‘dedication of the whole being’.
9
Buber sees confirming another as both a profound offer of acceptance and a way to assist the other
to wrestle ‘with him against himself’ (Buber, 1965, p. 29).
10
For Buber there are two forms of crisis which can lead a self into hiding, render a person’s psychic
dynamic ‘obdurate and secretive’ (Buber, 1953, p. 134). The first is through ‘negative experiences
with our environment’ (Buber, 1953, p. 134), which denies confirmation of our being. The second
crisis is ‘negative experiences with oneself’ (Buber, 1953, p. 134), which is the individual’s inability
to confirm himself.

22. 306 S. Blenkinsop
11
Education is Buber’s most comprehensive discussion of education. Other works, such as
The Education of Character (Buber, 1968b, pp. 104–117), offer further insight but are not as
complete.
12
Buber tells a story in Paths to Utopia (1958b) of witnessing a beating and having the sense of being
both the beater and the receiver.
13
Buber commonly uses ladder imagery, as comparable to a person climbing towards relationship
with the Eternal Thou.
14
The educator must remember that each student is unique and in flux and may therefore be
at a completely different stage of growth from that of other students.
15
Educators must not forget either Kavanna, intention, or tikkun, the turning. The teacher is the
purveyor of grace only in so far as he tries to set the stage for understanding if and when those
moments of insight occur, but it is the student who is responsible for turning herself, working hard
and thoughtfully preparing for the possibility of relationship in conjunction with animals, plants,
minerals and, lastly, a teacher trying to imitate God.
References
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