This chapter focuses on some of the interpersonal relations that sustain alternative learning spaces. Drawing on the arguments in previous chapters, it asks what kinds of interpersonal relationships are – in the view of educators – most appropriate for learning. I look initially at how these relationships are characterised – for instance, as ‘friendship’ or ‘family’. I then interrogate the intensity of these relationships, focusing, as in previous chapters, upon feelings, and especially those like empathy, care and love. Finally, I return to the question of habit. However, rather than thinking about how habits are internalised within young people to change their behaviour (Chapter Six), I want to consider how the learning and unlearning of habits can be understood as outward facing. That is, through some detailed case studies, I argue that some educators advocate spiritual conceptions of love, which are integral to the production of habits of generosity, care and responsibility to others, rather than the self. Ultimately, then, this chapter is not simply about the roles of interpersonal relationships in learning. This would be a far from original topic in terms of the broader field of education studies, even if a largely untapped area of research for geographers. Rather, this chapter is about what kinds of feeling and habit are emergent from interpersonal relations in alternative learning spaces.

In doing the above, this chapter also provides some reflection on that most geographical of terms: scale. The question of scale is actually an important one for alternative learning spaces. This is because, as I have repeatedly stated, many alternative approaches to education somehow emphasise ‘smallness’ (Carnie, 2003; Sliwka, 2008). In some contexts, this can mean the physical smallness of the classroom, with bespoke furniture designed at child level (as is the case in many Montessori, Steiner and human scale classrooms). At the same time, most mainstream schools use furniture designed for children, so other than the volume of the classroom itself, we cannot with any confidence claim that it is the physical size of the space that makes the difference. Rather, many alternative educators – take human scale education as an obvious example – adopt a broader definition of smallness.