Teacher Alienation and Burnout

A Philosophical Phenomenon

Some have argued that Western philosophers' interest in alienation can be traced as far back as Heraclitus, Plato, and pre-Socratics such as the Orphies, who noted that humans were always distanced from their ideal states and were destined to fall short of perfection by design. This argument was later explained brilliantly by Danish philosopher S0ren Kierkegaard, who argued that because individuals were inferior to the divine by design, they were doomed to a life of despair. To Kierkegaard, the only possible escape from alienation and despair was to fully commit oneself to an authentic spiritual existence.

However, Kierkegaard's contemporaries, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, placed emphasis on other aspects of alienation. To Nietzsche, alienation is a characteristic common to the hopelessly weak “Last Men,” people whose lack of intellectual depth and will-to-power float through life, adopting others' values as their own because they are scared, unable, or too indifferent to do otherwise. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and the work of others such as Jaspers and Heidegger later inspired a strand of philosophy called existentialism.

Alienation was among the central philosophical issues that captured existentialists' attention. Philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir wrote compelling treatises on alienation, exploring the phenomenon from various perspectives, all of which generally argued that alienation was an inescapable aspect of modern existence. Among twenty-first-century philosophers, Richard Schmitt [Page 778]has made a useful contribution by pointing out that alienation is multidimensional and can manifest as a global phenomenon, wherein a person is wholly alienated, or other forms of alienation that are either situational or affect only one aspect of existence.

Alienation is largely ignored among educational philosophers, save for a few such as A. S. Neill, who speak of it implicitly as a condition opposed to freedom. The one notable exception to this is Maxine Greene, who, over the course of her career, has engaged in a “dialectic of freedom” through which she has sought to deal with existential themes; among these is alienation. For Greene, the key to escaping alienation is individual agency and choice. Where some philosophers, such as Sartre, suggest that choice and freedom are twin burdens to be borne alone, Greene instead gives educators a framework through which they can meaningfully connect their individuality to others, thereby forming powerful relationships and communities. These communities can create a social network that can overcome, or at least combat, alienation.

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