Of mothers and teachers: roles in a pedagogy of caring

Many writers have advocated caring as an alternative moral code for, and approach to, education. These pedagogies of care seek to create an environment or culture of caring in the classroom where children can live in and learn about care. Caring for children in a school invites comparison to the way mothers care for children in the home. This paper focuses on Jane Roland Martin's The schoolhome and related works, which appear to cloud distinctions between the role of teacher and that of mother. The author, sympathetic to the project of a pedagogy of caring, warns that the role of mother is not one to be emulated naively and examines the differences and similarities between the two roles in order to avoid predictable pitfalls and teacher burn-out, and concludes that we must value both the commonalities and distinctions between the two roles.