Corps de l’article

Introduction

Since the 1990s, cosmopolitan education has triggered curiosity in alternative social and political systems. Influenced by moral, social, political, and economic disciplines, there have been divergent views regarding what constitutes cosmopolitan education, such as the cultivation of universal empathy and intellectual world spirit (Nussbaum, 1996, 2019), the fostering of a sense of human rights (Osler and Starkey, 2005), the reconsideration of humanity by looking at imperfect humanity (Todd, 2009), reflecting on universality and particularity (Hansen, 2011), and an eccentric vision (Papastephanou, 2012). All these suppositions presuppose a cosmopolitanism in which all human beings, regardless of their nationality, race, gender, and other attributes of identity, live in one world. While cosmopolitanism transcends borders, it also encourages the local community, as the local place is inherent to cosmopolitan education. Ideas such as “cosmopolitan patriotism” (Appiah, 1996, 2006) and “rooted cosmopolitanism” (Kymlica and Walker, 2012) are considered to be at the heart of cosmopolitan education (Vinokur, 2018; Hayden, 2018). Therefore, cosmopolitan education based on a local place can occur if we reconfigure the relationship between heuristic universality, which cannot be regarded as absolute fixed universality but as a potential one based on basic commonality, and particularity.

Heuristic universality and particularity are not juxtaposed in cosmopolitan education, as universality or at least impartiality can be found in particular things and people. The question, then, is how are such “contradictions” exactly compatible? What is significant here is that the acquisition process for these apparent compatibilities, rather than for the objects to be obtained, needs to be considered as part of this compatibility itself, which means that dialogue plays a crucial role in critical and postcolonial approaches to cosmopolitan education (Appiah, 2006; Canagarajah, 2013; Hayden, 2018). However, as acts of terrorism, extremism, and chauvinism reject a common platform, it is necessary to first develop a dialogue of trust that eschews totalitarian universalism and solid individualism, leading to a common relationship with others. Critics of cosmopolitan education claim that it is a form of authoritarian universalism (Harvey, 2009) that standardizes manifold education (Stornaiuolo, 2016). I think that while cosmopolitan education has tended to problematize the substance of being with which we attempt to have a relationship, such as universal values or local traditions, in certain ways it has underestimated the possible condition of the relationship itself, namely, that of the dialogical process of acquiring certain positions. Considering trust as a base of dialogue, therefore, could compensate for this lack of discussion, and reinforce and reconstruct cosmopolitan education.

Trust has been widely investigated. Influenced by Parsons, who called the idea that each egoistic person could construct a social order a “Hobbesian problem of order” (1937, p. 86), Deutsch raised the issue of trust in behavioural science (Deutsch, 1958). From this initial discourse on trust, it began to be seen in sociology as an element that reduced social complexity by generalizing behavioural expectations (Luhmann, 1979, p. 93), in economics as a certain level of subjective probability (Gambetta, 1988, p. 217), and in psychology as “a psychological state comprizing the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of intentions or behaviours of another” (Rousseau et al., 1998, p. 395). Philosophy extracted the essential forms of these views to develop the three-placed trust notion, that is, A trusts B to perform X (Baier, 1986; Hardin, 2002; Jones, 1996). This is not, however, an integrated definition of trust, but merely a general (but not common) structure. These interdisciplinary studies on trust further illuminate the need for trust to be reconsidered, as people often lose trust in politics, society, and even in their daily lives (Bartmann et al., 2014, p. 13). Trust in education follows these streams, suggesting that very few can deny the positive role of trust in educational practice, as it is challenging for teachers to teach without a relationship built on trust. However, the difference between trust in education and in other areas is due to the relationship between educators and children. Compared with educators, children are viewed as lacking judgement or responsibility, and as transforming and going through radical development. Accordingly, trust in education is not an applied field of philosophical trust, but possesses extraordinary characteristics.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, trust had not been a theme in education studies, possibly because education presupposed a mistrust in children.[1] Plato claimed that education was the art of changing a child’s direction, as a child only looked at incorrect and virtual images in a dark cave (Plato, 2000), and Locke stated that human beings were creatures that could be educated for the most part (Locke, 1989). The implications of these statements were that children were mistrusted and education was necessary to develop their capabilities.[2] From the late 19th century, a new education movement based on child-centred education and pedagogical anthropology turned its attention to trust in education. Trust was understood as the base of the pedagogical atmosphere (Bollnow, 2001), whereas trustworthiness represented an adult trait and a future goal for children (Langeveld, 1980). This trust in education focused primarily on the asymmetric relationship between educators and children, and was thus viewed as a trust that served only to strengthen the authoritarian order. However, it is proposed that trust in education needs to be viewed as a geographical, spatial trust that comprises a vertical trust between educators and children, and a horizontal trust between friends especially, that is, an open trust associated with the spaces in which we live. We do not trust people as isolated objects, but as people who are connected with surroundings in this world, trusting matters embedded in various contexts in the world. Therefore, trust does not merely exist in our relationships with others but in the space in which people live. This open spatial trust could help reinforce “education toward rooted cosmopolitanism” (Vinokur, 2018) and reconstruct it for a post-anthropocentric world.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: first, I review the discussions on trust in education. Then, I examine the vertical educational relationship of trust and suggest that trust goes beyond relationships and could be excessively one-sided. Moreover, I consider another type of trust in education, horizontal trust that accompanies friendship.[3] After that, it is argued that integrated spatial trust based on space rather than mere relationships can be developed to reinforce the rooted cosmopolitan education. Finally, the meaning of cosmopolitan education based on spatial trust is elucidated. Through this consideration, I conclude that spatial trust contributes not only to bringing about cosmopolitan education but also to transforming it to bring us a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitan view of education that offers a matrix for dialogues with plenty of matters in the world.

Trust in Education

Trust in education has been examined from three perspectives: trust in educational settings, trust in educational governance, and generalized trust (Niedlich et al., 2021). In this paper I consider basic theoretical trust in education, that is, the third trust, which has two main characteristics. First, trust has been presupposed in the educational relationship between educators and children, which may have fundamentally developed from the ideas of “Urvertrauen [basic trust]” (Erikson, 1980) and “Geborgenheit [security]” (Bollnow, 2001) within parental relationships. Further, trust is related to the original trust between parents and their children (Buber, 1962a, 1962b) and is moreover found in caring relationships (Noddings, 1986, 1992).[4] Trust can also be perceived as a part of everyday learning relationships in a classroom. For example, Biesta claims that the notion of trust in the learning–teaching relationship ensures that education remains educative, stating that from the learner’s perspective, “education only begins when the learner is willing to take a risk. One way of putting this is to say that one of the constituents of the educational relationship is trust” (Biesta, 2006, p. 25, emphasis in original). However, for teachers, “trust precisely opens up a ‘space’ in which the child or student encounters its freedom and where they need to figure out what to do with this freedom” (Biesta, 2017, p. 92). Learning for children is neither an indoctrination by educators nor an isolated autonomous work, but a need to respond to others by themselves with freedom. Trust does not appear in one agent or another, but in several educational relationships, especially between educators and children.

Trust has also been witnessed as part of moral education, where trust is juxtaposed with its opposite, that is, betrayal. When we are faced with betrayal, we are involved in an act of moral irresponsibility (Baier, 1986, pp. 234–35). Therefore, trust is a virtue (D’Olimpio, 2016). This indicates that in education, ethical trust should be replaced with conditional confidence (Webster, 2018). Trust is sometimes aligned with moral education to emphasize that trustworthiness is a virtue. Character education based on Aristotelian virtues refers to trustworthiness as necessary to develop the intellectual virtues of phronesis (Kristjánsson, 2022). The difference between trust and trustworthiness is that the latter is an attribute of an agent, whereas the former is found in relationships. I suggest that trust cannot be identified with individual moral trust alone, because trust cannot be achieved if the other is not worth being trusted. Rather, trust has a relational moral meaning, since a betrayal of trust erases the responsibility to others.

Several studies have been conducted that theoretically reflect trust in education. Fisher and Tallant highlight that trust in education lacks a clear definition, mainly because studies on trust in education have disregarded discussions in other fields and distinctions between trust and trustworthiness, and trust and reliance (2020, pp. 787–88). It is true that trust in education needs further clarification but incorrect that philosophical or sociological definitions of trust can merely be applied to trust in education, as this belief ignores the inevitable distinction between educators and children. Even considering the voices advocating for egalitarianism and anti-paternalism, the distinction between educators and children cannot be ignored. Buber criticized Rogers for insisting that teachers and children were not equal because they do not have the same responsibilities, even though they were equal human beings (Buber and Rogers, 1960, p. 211). According to them, an educator has the intention to educate children, whereas children do not (p. 211). As educators do not always trust children to do something but nevertheless have a general common understanding of trust, in this article I do not accept the philosophical three-placed trust (A trusts B to perform X) for trust in education but scrutinize trust in education as an extraordinary context.

Vertical Trust

Trust in general differs from trust in education. Trust in general is defined as the trust placed in a mutual relationship in which a person believes that her/his requirements will be met as expected (Hawley, 2012). Trust in education refers to the trust educators hold in children. If trust in general was applied to trust in education, children would be expected to have the suitable skills and good intentions for their obligations to be trusted by their teachers. However, children are learning, changing, and developing, and therefore cannot be expected to have such skills or good intentions when initially entering the educator/learner relationship. Therefore, if teachers had trust in general, they would be unable to trust the children. Unless it is accepted that teachers do not and cannot trust children, trust in education must be considered as different from trust in general. As it is difficult to envisage teachers who do not and cannot trust their students (cf. Pepper et al., 2010; Leighton and Bustos Gomez, 2018; Thayer-Bacon, 2012; Niedlich et al., 2021, p. 9), trust in education must be conspicuous: teachers should trust their students even though their students betray them, that is to say, they should trust them excessively.[5] As long as trust in education is regarded as trust, it must be a trust that acknowledges children as people who are expected to do something in the future but does not require their skills or intentions in the present, as trust in general does. What divides these two trusts is the existence of children and a relationship between teachers and children. As trust in politics, economics, or philosophy does not presuppose children as an object of trust, it is necessary to examine the relationship with children to elucidate the nature of trust in education.

Though there are some mutual interactions, educators (including parents and teachers) have an asymmetric relationship with children. Young children (especially helpless babies) do not influence their parents with clear rational intention, whereas parents should protect and accept them, with the importance not lying in the origin but in the structure of the relationship. Parents should protect and care for and continuously trust their children, but the children necessarily just rely on, follow, and therefore trust them in order to survive (Bollnow, 2001). Even if the children reject their help or care, parents should still accept and protect them as they raise them.[6] Therefore, there is an asymmetric relationship between parents and children, as parents should trust their children unconditionally whereas the children trust their parents for their physical necessities (Pestalozzi, 1915; Bollnow, 2001), which means that children’s basic understanding of trust emerges from this asymmetric relationship (Bollnow, 2001, p. 18; Erikson, 1980, p. 57).

Teachers construct another version of this asymmetric relationship with children, as without trust, children would not listen to their teachers (Pepper et al., 2010), that is, “what is developed in education depends on the power of their trust in teachers” (Bollnow, 2009, p. 265). As educators, teachers must trust the children, even though they do not live up to the teachers’ expectations and even betray them. This does not mean that teachers must blindly accept the children’s irrational behaviour, such as telling lies or breaking promises, but it does mean that they must recognize the children’s potentialities and capabilities, correcting their failures and trusting them as people (Bollnow, 2001, p. 50). Teachers do not mistrust or break off their relationship with children who do not respond to their trust and betray them, because teachers have a duty to educate children with trust in education, which suggests that they must maintain their trust in their children. However, in this relationship, it is not necessary for children to trust their teachers if they are not trustworthy, which further highlights the asymmetric trust in the teacher–child relationship.

Therefore, this asymmetric trust is a vertical trust because the actions required by each of the roles in the relationship are not equal. To defend this position from criticisms of paternalism, it is true that teachers and children are equal as human beings; however, the requirements of teachers and children are unequal, which makes the trust in the educational relationship between them distinct. Vertical trust does not actually represent authoritarian commitment and is not aligned with order or power. When teachers trust children, they cannot force the children to obey their trust and expectations. Teachers’ trust gives the children the required space and freedom to decide for themselves (Biesta, 2017, p. 92; Webster, 2018, p. 156). Therefore, there is no superiority, inferiority, or oppression in vertical trust relationships, because it is not associated with an excessive expectation that prevents the acceptance of children as people. The teachers’ trust and response from children in this fundamentally equal relationship comprise vertical trust in education.

Further, to clarify vertical trust, it is helpful to examine the nature of teachers. Aside from their task of educating children, why do teachers trust children, even when they themselves are hated and disliked by children? Teachers of humanity, such as Jesus, Socrates, and Zarathustra in Nietzsche, do not pursue reciprocal trust, but give people their trust and love regardless of its reciprocation (Yano, 2008).[7] While it is not suggested that teachers are like Jesus, the substance of trust offered by these teachers is the same; that is, all teachers have trust in their students even though they receive no benefit from that trust, because their goal is not only to educate them but also to live together with them, and therefore they have in the latter sense no other goals outside of the trust itself. As teachers’ work is not only associated with relationships of interests, they must trust the students implicitly as well; therefore, the vertical trust from teachers is not merely a means to an end, but the end itself.[8] Most people have relationships with interests and relationships without interests, which for teachers consist of a trust for education, and trust as it is respectively; vertical trust integrates both these trusts in an educational relationship.

Horizontal Trust

Educational settings comprise not only vertical relationships based on asymmetric trust between teachers and children, but also other relationships, such as children’s relationships with other classmates, with neighbours, or with friends they play with in and out of school. In the case in which children trust other classmates who are not friends but are equal to them, to seek to complete tasks or assignments, children tend to think about whether these classmates are trustworthy. If a classmate is known to always forget to do their homework and is unwilling to join group work, other classmates may not trust the classmate. When children want to consult their neighbours, such as their coaches for sports or their relatives about their school life, it is likely that they trust the neighbour or relative to have the wisdom to respond to their trouble. Children generally do not rely on neighbours who appear strange or aggressive for fear of being abused. This horizontal, equal-trust relationship in the educational context could be seen to align with general-trust relationships, that is, children begin to trust others as part of their ordinary lives: children gradually get to discern the suitable skills and good intentions that trustworthy people might have.

The other type of horizontal trust is trust in friendship,[9] which is differentiated from trust relationships with other people. According to Aristotle, there are three types of friendship, that is, friendship of pleasure, utility, and character. Acquaintances who offer pleasure and utility may not always be friends, as someone who could offer the same pleasure or utility can replace them; however, others may be substantial friends because of their character (Aristotle, 2002, pp. 210–12). This third type of friendship, however, cannot be replaced because their character is part of who they are and why they are considered friends. Relationships with friends vary from those that provide only pleasure or utility. People cannot often explain why someone is a friend, as friendship appears to be more of a dyadic relationship between two people based on mutuality and equality (Alfano, 2016, p. 187), which infers that friendship is mysterious, as we cannot be a friend or find a friend alone. As mentioned in the previous section, educators trust children to educate them; furthermore, they trust them excessively, and children trust educators to fulfil their needs. These relationships do not completely fit the concept of friendship, as they comprise strongly the elements that are means to certain ends.

Trust, rather than intention, is the basis for friendship. Without seeking pleasure or utility, friendship is not bound to anything but trust (Alfano, 2016, pp. 195–96). Accordingly, “people cannot have got to know each other before they have savoured all that salt together, nor indeed can they have accepted each other or be friends before each party is seen to be lovable, and is trusted, by the other” (Aristotle, 2002, p. 212). Therefore, trust plays an indispensable role in friendships, originating from the person themselves. In other words, trust is fundamental to essential friendship, namely, character friendship. Why does one trust the other and regard them as a friend? There is no decisive answer to this question. In friendships, trust is nothing but an end in itself.

That the substantial condition of the possibility of friendship is trust does not signify that the other two elements, that is, pleasure and utility, are meaningless. In real relationships, these three components of friendship are not completely separated; rather are interwoven: one who provides the comfort of dedicated support to her/his friend who is confronted with serious problems is meant to be respected for personal character, and one who provides solidarity with her/his friend for constructing a better society can promote her/his civic character (Kristjánsson, 2022, p. 145, pp. 154–55). Certain pleasure and utility friendships blunt a clear distinction between these two and character friendship (Kristjánsson, 2022, p. 7, pp. 155–56). What is crucial here is that these two friendships of pleasure and utility presuppose trust. Without trust, neither pleasure nor utility can be offered to the other friend, since trust is the fundamental pivot of friendship.

Children can experience trust as an end in itself by being with their friends. This trust as an end, however, can be accompanied by experiential elements such as pleasure or utility. In reality, it is not easy if one acquires a friend who merely offers sorrow and hurt. Rather, one often regards her/him as a friend, recognizing her/his tenderness and helpfulness, for instance. The point I want to emphasize is that children can touch such an unconditional profound trust in ordinary reciprocal friendships. Horizontal trust in educational contexts is embedded in ordinary, but at the same time extraordinary, relationships of friendship.

Horizontal trust in an educational context, therefore, comprises both conditional and unconditional trust in others, where the latter fundamentally prescribes the former to enable mutual interactions. Children look at others and determine whether they are trustworthy. However, if they trust others, they need to presuppose an unconditional trust, because, as discussed regarding the third friendship, trust itself is ultimately beyond rationality, that is, trust is not fundamentally accompanied by reason. However, children tend to trust their friends unconditionally, understanding their friends’ tastes, opinions, and views. In this horizontal trust, therefore, children also experience a sense of the excessive vertical trust offered by educators.

Spatial Trust Based on Trust in Matters

Trust in education is divided into vertical trust between educators and children, and horizontal trust especially associated with friends, both of which are based on differential relationships with others. This trust in education cannot be reduced to a reciprocal relationship. In vertical trust, educators nevertheless trust children even though they might not respond to the educators’ expectations, and in horizontal trust children trust their friends without ultimate reason even though the friends do not bring them pleasure or utility. Vertical trust in education is more fundamental than horizontal trust, because from the beginning, children are born in a vertical-trust relationship. Educators model how people relate to others asymmetrically, from which children learn to form essential friendships with others. Through these processes of trust in education, children learn about authentic relationships that are not instrumental and are beyond the means-ends connection. How can children trust educators and friends who trust them without reciprocal relationships? Both live out of ordinary mutual relationships with others and are difficult to illustrate as mere objective agents. It is difficult for children to trust simply such people who trust them excessively, since children also live in the real world, where reciprocal relationships prevail. I suggest that trust in matters plays a significant role in this problem.

There is trust in matters that is not related to agents: the actual trust we place in education, philosophy, or medicine; the trust we place in the dynamic auto purification of nature; and the trust we place in dialogue and critical thinking. These types of trust cannot be reduced to trust in things that are established and controlled by certain agents, such as trains or bridges (Bollnow, 2009, p. 263). Education as an idea is not related to a certain person but suggests a philosophy that helps children develop and can be achieved through nature and the environment without the need for direct agents (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 66). Accordingly, these forms of trust proceed neither from agents nor systems, as Luhmann suggested (Luhmann, 1979), but from matters.[10]

Trusting matters separates us from ordinary human relationships and requires us to listen to the voices in concrete spaces, the places in which we live and work. If we trust volunteering (activities) and support poor children in a developing country, we do not trust a person, but trust that such volunteering could assist the children in that place. Matters in this context appear when we work toward something in the world. For example, we trust that climbing and hiking can provide us with enormous pleasure and feelings toward nature, or that shopping can change our daily routines and bring us comfort. Understanding matters means that activities in specific situations and places need to be accounted for; when we trust matters, we open ourselves to all the places in the world.

It is inevitable that we trust matters in our daily lives. I trust eating fresh organic vegetables and walking in the morning. My friend trusts playing the piano for an audience, which brings her profound joy. Educators must trust education contributing to children’s development in a broad sense. We are fundamentally built through trusting matters.[11] As argued in the previous sections, educators excessively trust children and children trust their friends without reasons; however, these types of trust should not be viewed as equivalent to blind love. Even though the vertical and horizontal trusts in education do not pursue reciprocal profits ultimately, the basis of the education trust relationship is a trust in matters, which prevents us from trusting others blindly and fanatically. As the trust in matters is related to our basic trust in the world, I regard this to be geographical and spatial trust, with “geographical” signifying that it is found in an actual space and an actual place, as “the goal of geography is nothing less than an understanding of the vast interacting system comprising all humanity and its natural environment on the surface of the Earth” (Ackerman, 1963, p. 435). Trust in education needs to be endorsed by such spatial trust, as this type of trust implies that we not only trust children, educators, and friends but also trust them in spatially located matters that we trust. I do not claim that we trust the world existentially, as Bollnow and Bohnsack do (Bollnow, 2011, p. 12; Bohnsack, 2014, pp. 65–81), which means we cannot be confronted with blind totalitarianism; rather, we need to trust matters in the actual world when we trust others in an educational context.

The trust children place in educators means they trust educators who trust matters. Similarly, the trust educators place in children signifies that they trust children who trust matters in this world, accompanied by trust in education. Even though children do not trust their friends only because they are engaged in certain matters, a friendship implies trust in friends who trust matters. Children trust friends as others who trust matters such as playing soccer or reading novels, as these matters constitute a person’s characteristics. Consequently, we do not trust people as isolated objects, but trust them as people who trust matters that are embedded in various contexts worldwide.

Trust, therefore, does not just exist in our relationships with other people but is inherent in a space in which trust matters. It is not a coincidence that children seek out spaces where they feel comfortable and protected after they lose their basic trust in their parents. Children have a desire to build a “secret space” (Langeveld, 1960, p. 74), as “children have a requirement to form their own space so that they can enjoy a relaxed mood and feel the space as they have by themselves” (Bollnow, 2001, p. 25). Through these concrete “spatial” experiences, children establish their own bases from which they can be tranquil and happy enough to trust others (Bollnow, 2009, p. 266). This suggests that children are willing to trust a certain space or place in which they are familiar with the matters. Therefore, trust in education is not merely human, but spatial. As I argue at the beginning of this section, children learn authentic relationships that are not instrumental and are beyond the means-ends connection through trusting their educators and friends. This can be guaranteed by means of spatial trust based on trust in matters in the world. For children, spatial trust could seem to be a detour from experiencing authentic relationships with trust in educators and friends, but if children attempt to trust educators and friends as they trust ordinary people, they cannot trust educators and friends, since educators and friends will seem to be strangers who are beyond ordinary reciprocal relationships. Therefore, children treat them conversely as mere instrumental things. For children as well as for adults, matters including human action in the world are the clear presence in comparison with human motivation or inner personality, which helps children (and us) become closer with educators and friends, and trust them. We are basically engaged in trust in matters, and what is more significant is that children can begin to trust educators and friends in authentic relationships through spatial trust based on trust in matters.

What follows from this spatial trust? Apart from the trust given by educators to children, we usually say we can trust one but cannot trust another, which is a closed trust that excludes people who are not worth being trusted. However, as argued in the fourth section, horizontal trust means that children ultimately trust their friends without reason, which is also underpinned by open spatial trust. Spatial trust enables children to relate to others, regardless of their attributes and characteristics. With this spatial trust, children become open to the differences in others and seek to acknowledge the matters in this world, which is the basis for the development of a mutual dialogue on cosmopolitan education.

Cosmopolitan Education with Dialogue Based on Spatial Trust

Dialogue has enormous power for education, since it acknowledges people who are engaged in dialogue and opens up for them opportunities to create something new, as well as to be created and developed with others; “dialogical relations are something fundamental to education” (Guilherme and Morgan, 2018, p. 17). Moreover, dialogue can change the history of humanity, as the opposite of war is, since early times, words of real dialogue where people understand each other (Buber, 2003, p. 98). This is because dialogue presupposes a plurality of human beings and offers us public space to prevent us from being involved in totalitarian control (Arendt, 1982). Buber identifies real dialogue as dialogue between “I and Thou,” which he describes as a human formation (Buber, 1958). This dialogue with a mutual existential relationship requires Thou, representing not just the other but God whom I encounter. Contrarily, Levinas criticizes Buber’s view on dialogue, since Buber’s I-Thou relation concerns its reciprocity and exclusiveness obtained from friendly partners in a reciprocal dialogue. He emphasizes that the otherness of the other cannot constitute a mutual dialogic relationship, since the other is fundamentally asymmetric and differentiated. According to him, the essence of dialogue is a prayer, as the essence of talk is a prayer (Levinas 1951, p. 95); that is, talk, or prayer, can call the other. Although there are irreducible differences among these views on dialogue, it seems that a common possible condition lies in trust, as both Buber and Levinas offer no rational basis for the possibility of dialogue. For Buber, real dialogue with the I-Thou relationship in education presupposes mutual acceptance between teachers and children (Buber 1958), which is accompanied by trust: “this [Buber’s] mutuality, this dialogue, can only come to the fore if the student trusts the educator” (Guilherme and Morgan, 2018, p. 17). A prayer as Levinas stresses for considering dialogue, represents hope, which can be characterized as “trust in the future” (Bollnow 2001, p. 61).[12] Therefore, unless we accept rational causes or dogmatic metaphysics as the basic condition of dialogue, trust plays a role in this place.

One criticism of this understanding of dialogue based on trust could be related to the “chicken and egg” issue, namely, why we should presume that trust is a necessary ground for dialogue rather than the other way around. Appiah suggests that it is only by sharing stories across differences that we begin to build trust (Appiah, 2006). However, it is not clear here how sharing stories across differences begins. I believe that if we try to share something with different others, we need to trust them even in this place, though this trust may be weaker and more ambiguous. In the process of dialogue, trust among those involved can become stronger and deeper. This trust should be a spatial trust that is transformative and dynamic, being open to the world. If trust is regarded as mere trust in people, we are almost unable to begin to engage in dialogue with strangers, since we do not know who they are and do not trust them before the dialogue.[13] When we need to have dialogue with strangers, we should have spatial trust based on trust in matters. Therefore, I suggest that trust as spatial trust lies in the condition of making dialogue possible. In this process of dialogue, trust would be furthermore strengthened to establish deeper and richer dialogue.

Spatial trust enables us to hold dialogues not only with acquaintances, but also with all strangers in the world. Accordingly, dialogue based on spatial trust encourages people to be fundamentally open to the world. Cosmopolitan education consists of developing openness to the world, and containing heuristic universality and particularity in a theoretical framework, since children live and develop in the world. Dialogue is a crucial component of cosmopolitan education. Dialogic cosmopolitanism is proposed as one that comprises thick and thin dialogue, namely, dialogue rooted in concrete and particular engagement, and dialogue based on global justice (Jordann, 2009; Healy, 2011). Taking over the significance of dialogue, Hansen indicates the essential nature of cosmopolitan education as reflective openness to the new, with reflective loyalty to the known through dialogue (Hansen, 2011). This dialogue can bear common human capabilities (Nussbaum 2006, 2019). Nussbaum’s 10 human capabilities are not conceptualized metaphysically or experimentally, but are based on the “intuitive and discursive,” with imagination regarding the form of life, that is, dialogue (Nussbaum, 2006, p. 78). Therefore, she suggests this list of capabilities “as open-ended and subject to ongoing revision and rethinking” (ibid., p. 78). These capabilities are identified with cosmopolitan embodiment (Nussbaum, 2019). Cosmopolitan education postulates dialogue as a profound moment to educate children as cosmopolitan in this world.

Two problems with this postulate remain: first, the problem of how dialogue begins, and second, the problem of the form of openness required for cosmopolitan education. Regarding the first problem, studies on cosmopolitan education tend not to pay attention to the beginning of dialogue, that is, a possible condition of dialogue, but rather to the types and characteristics of dialogue (Healy, 2011; Hayden, 2019, pp. 236–40). Notwithstanding, we sometimes witness anti-cosmopolitan incidents such as antagonism, terrorism, and wars, which mainly occur not as the result of dialogue but due to a lack of it. Cosmopolitan education, therefore, needs to focus on the conditional beginning of dialogue.[14] It is the first but a profound step for children to strive for spatial trust based on trust in matters.[15] Through this spatial trust, they can accept trust from educators and friends, making them ready to trust educators and friends, as well as others, to be able to dialogue with each other. In the second problem, the current issue that cosmopolitan education should confront is how we live with other living things in a world in which climate change and global warming threaten us. Dialogue is normally conceived as being between people, which does not offer moments to cope with such urgent problems. It is necessary to examine the art of dialogue for broader cosmopolitan education. What I suggest is that spatial trust based on trust in matters widens the possibilities of dialogue: when we trust in eating organic vegetables, or in walking in tropical forests where many animals and insects live, we are involved in the space of the world with other living beings and related with them in the world. This could be the first step in coping with anthropocentric cosmopolitan education, with regulated dialogues only between people. Spatial trust based on trust in matters reinforces dialogic cosmopolitan education and reconstructs human cosmopolitan education.

Conclusion

Trust in education is a geographical and spatial trust comprising both vertical and horizontal trust. In vertical trust, educators trust children excessively but do not love them blindly, as educators trust the role and capability of education as a matter. Further, children trust educators who trust matters instead of educators who trust children absolutely. The latter educators are rarely accepted and trusted by children, since educators are beyond their acceptable and conceptual existence. In horizontal trust, children trust friends who also trust matters, without particular reasons. Trust in education postulates differentiated trust based on vertical and horizontal trust, which fundamentally presupposes trust in matters; namely, spatial trust. In the general context, however, people trust others who have characters and dispositions that will benefit them in reciprocal relationships. This does not concern whether others trust matters, but rather whether they have trustworthy, conditional characteristics. This trust in general is only effective among certain reciprocal relationships. Trust in education as spatial trust based on trust in matter, however, offers a moment to cross the border of heterogeneous otherness and constitutes dialogues with others, which is the foundation for the development of rooted cosmopolitan education. Cosmopolitan dialogue requires open spatial trust as a basic condition. Through spatial trust in matters, children experience vertical trust and horizontal trust in friends and others, which allows them to listen to multiple voices in this actual world.

Therefore, cosmopolitan education is reinforced by spatial trust. Moreover, spatial trust is open not only to people but also to other beings in the world. Cosmopolitan education allows us to realize that we live in the world. Nevertheless, simple cosmopolitan education focuses only on the world in which human beings live. However, honeybees live, and poplars live in the same world. Conventional cosmopolitan education is therefore not “cosmo”-politan education, but rather anthropocentric citizenship education, though we must return to the original concept of cosmopolitan education based on the world we and all other beings live together in. I believe that spatial trust can help refigure this human-oriented dialogue and reconstruct cosmopolitan education for our post-anthropocentric world.