Social media has been rife with posts telling us all to write to those at home for 12 weeks and essential workers. One post which caught my eye instructed to write to an older person who provides inspiration in your life. I chose the Queen of care ethics hers, Nel Noddings.
Dear Nel,
Although we’ve never met, I have often imagined meeting you. When I picture our paths crossing at a conference or being introduced at the social after my eyes glaze, my nose tickles and crack the biggest smile.
When describing my career goals, I often joke that I plan to be “the next Nel Noddings” most of the time I receive a strained look. It could be my poor delivery but mainly it is because most people don’t know who you are and why would they? Neither did I until my final year of undergrad nursing, when writing on gender and care I discovered your work in the quietest, dustiest, section of the library.
I found your works at a time I needed them the most. I adored my nursing education but I wanted to be taught and explore the wider impact of a nurses role, to understand that all those who provide care are connected – and to grapple with what that connection was.
Your grounding in education spurred me to explore teaching as an aspect of my own practice. Viewing care as a site of learning became a fundamental rather than additional aspect of my work. I revelled in mentoring students because I could see your words in action, theory and practice no longer separate entities but both melded to form mine and the student’s interaction.
Unfortunate as it is, you were the first female ethicist I had ever read, something I hadn’t considered until then. I had not realised through my philosophy A Level how lacking the privileged lens is for understanding human interaction and the absence of marginalised folk’s realities from “mainstream” philosophy.
Care as a site of moral transformation has never felt more real than now. As the NHS gears up to diligently nurse thousands the stark national focus on facilitating care has highlighted our wild social failings in other areas. The UK’s harmful austerity policies and hostile “complicit” environment are now being experienced by people previous oblivious to the impact.
Our lack of care for people outside of our social consciousness is now biting us all. How we recover to a more sustainable, compassionate society is yet to be seen; but one thing is for certain, now, at this crazy moment in human history, learning and care are intertwined as one.
Thank you Nel.
Stay indoors. Wash your hands.
Rxx