Trains: attention, and an ethics of the Other

In this article, I think with trains to reflect about education, its rhythms, trajectories, and the possibilities that “attentive looking through windows” can afford us in moving toward just futures. Using two of Alfonsina Storni’s poems, the yellow train of Cien años de soledad as well as educational philosophy, I argue that trains can shape a way of thinking that serves standardizing purposes; which do not allow us to see the afflictions of the world. At the same time, trains can be a space in which fugitive time practices can be encouraged. By using Simone Weil’s notions of attention, I argue that a practice of attention is needed to attend to world afflictions, advance an ethics of the Other, and bring those afflictions to responsive collective spaces. In this line of thinking, trains that both pull together collective discussion and provide windows to look through are necessary. As educators, an essential task is finding ways to pedagogically value the diversity of such “look-through windows” to find collective conversations that disrupt dominant timescapes and reassert humanity for educators and students through attentive practices as acts of love.