One of Bollnow’s best-known hermeneutic phenomenological texts is “The Pedagogical Atmosphere” (1988). While the term “pedagogical relation” is a well- known and well-discussed concept, especially in the German theoretical educational literature, interestingly the term has become taken for granted and rather unclear. Bollnow wonders what it really means to speak of a “relation.” He points out that he prefers to substitute the concept of pedagogical relation with the notion of pedagogical atmosphere. “I take the term pedagogical atmosphere to mean all those fundamental emotional conditions and sentient human qualities that exist between the educator and the child and that form the basis for every pedagogical relationship” (1988, p. 5).
Bollnow is concerned that his study is not confused with the self-help child psychology literature which spells out what one should and should not do as a good parent. Rather he reaches for the deeper and more meaningful preconditions of pedagogy. “What we are most concerned with here is examining and describing those affective conditions and qualities which are necessary for the raising or educating of children to be possible or successful. And we mean this to be taken in a most fundamental sense, for we do not merely want to describe those prerequisites which foster and enhance childrearing, or alternatively those conditions which create difficulties and which we can do without; rather, we mean to describe the conditions which must be supposed to exist before there can even be something like childrearing for education to be possible (1988, p. 5).
Selected Readings:
Bollnow, O. F. (1960). “Lived-space.” Universitas 15(4): 31–39.
Bollnow, O. F. (1974). “The Objectivity of the Humanities and the Essence of Truth.” Philosophy Today 18(1): 3–18.
Bollnow, O. F. (1979). “What Does It Mean to Understand a Writer Better than He Understood Himself?” Philosophy Today 22(1/4): 10–22.
Bollnow, O. F. (1982). “On Silence—Findings of Philosophico-Pedagogical Anthropology.” Universitas 24(1): 41–47.
Bollnow, O. F. (1988). “The Pedagogical Atmosphere.” Phenomenology + Pedagogy 7(2): 5–78.