Higher education is in a deepening engagement crisis that is created by historical and technological forces outside the control of educational institutions. The rise of generative and agentic AI systems provides students cheap and easy alternatives to completing assignments or taking part in interactions themselves. People may become developmentally stunted by the easy availability of AI “help,” in much the same way that the convenience of GPS technology has rendered many of us unable to use maps to navigate. There is clearly a grave risk that students who have not had to write for themselves, think for themselves, or research without AI assistance may become limited in what they can do independently.

Concerns about the potential of AI for causing developmental harm to the writing and thinking abilities of generations of students are serious, but there is even more at stake. Contemporary instructors and students are subject to a vast array of stressors and distractions that interfere with our basic experience of life and our capacity to process our experiences. Given the constant presence of phones and other devices, we are caught up in a media environment that makes it hard to pay sustained attention to reading, to thinking, and even to awareness of our own thoughts and emotions. 

For many people, including those of us who grew up without smartphones, we no longer have to tolerate boredom, loneliness, or negative emotional states because we carry a magic portal of infinite distraction within our pockets. The habits of attention that isolate us within electronic attention bubbles can sever us from our own inner lives and from deep connection with others, the natural world, and the realm of meaning. Seen in this way, the current engagement crisis is much more than a technical problem that can be solved by better browser security. Instead, it raises questions about how our educational institutions can respond to the essential human developmental needs of our students. In other words, this project is about helping both instructors and students thrive as human beings.

In response to this engagement crisis, this “Essential Encounters” project seeks to draw attention back to the irreplaceably human, irreplaceably relational aspects of education. This project aims to help reframe educational practice as a holistic process promoting human development through authentic “learning encounters.” The aim is to foster the development of educational practice that helps both instructors and students experience education as a relational process that promotes holistic human flourishing.

This project builds on the work of philosopher Martin Buber, who wrote that “All actual life is encounter.” He argued that knowing is inherently relational, that there is a kind of implicit social stance in all the knowing that we can do. He explained that there is a kind of practical, objective knowing that he called “I – it.” In this kind of knowing, the knowers hold themselves separate, above, and distanced from the object thus known. This kind of knowing provides distance, objectivity and freedom from entangling relationships. In “I-it” knowing, the knower acts upon the object known but remains aloof from it and impervious to being affected by “it.” Buber explained that this kind of knowing is essential for many practical aspects of daily life, but that if it becomes profoundly harmful if it is our primary way of knowing others, or nature, or reality, because it isolates us from the relatedness that gives our lives depth and meaning. Buber described another form of knowing called “I-thou” knowing. In “I-thou” knowing, the knower becomes intensely present to the person or thing known, open to all the resonances of the relationship, open to being changed by the encounter. That is what Buber meant by saying that “All actual life is encounter.”

The simple premise of this project is that the kind of learning that matters most takes place in the midst of encounters in which deeply relational, deeply experiential learning occurs; these are the “essential encounters” that exemplify Buber’s “I-thou” knowing. In such encounters, we become deeply present to ourselves and to the people, places, trees, or poems we meet there. The aspiration of this project is to explore what we can do to promote the kind of deeply meaningful, deeply relational encounters that help us learn to become more human.