To teach

It's a pleasure to teach, when the student is curious. This is the subject of a lyrical mood-study I wrote in 1988, reproduced with minor edits.


To Teach

To teach is to step into another man's thought,
to hold with one hand some of his knowledge
and with the other a source of new light,
to draw these together as a new line,
and to leave it there as a frozen principle
upon which to base the next.

To teach is to start a point & hold interest.
Then, to continue the theme to a question mark.
To raise an issue. 
To pose a question that must be solved: NOW!
It is to make visible, to the student, a contradiction.
It means, to know the premises of the pupil -- 
and to propound an "impossibility" 
that pleads for a new theoretical construct.
It means forcing the mind to re-evaluate its principles,
to see the chinks, to spot the gaps, in its hypotheses.
It means the throwing up facts
that are like lights showing the way.
To teach is to catalyze another man's mind 
into frantic quest.

The student sees the new facts.
He cannot bear to have them floating
in a cloud of the mysterious.
yet, he cannot anchor it to any current hypotheses.
He sees the need for a new rule,
a new word, a new abstraction, a new measure.
And he steps forward in this direction.
He meets his teacher half-way 
in the bright enjoyment of a new idea.

To teach is to enjoy the student
the excitement that was once yours:
the excitement of new ideas.