Why we teach?

Why we teach?

For those of us who are in the business of teaching, at whatever levels, it's a question worth pondering.

Gary Gutting, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and a frequent contributor to the Times' The Stone, a forum for contemporary philosophers to discuss issues pertaining to philosophy, writes that for him "teaching is not about the amount of knowledge one passes on, but the enduring excitement one generates."

Gutting is primarily interested in enabling "close encounters" between students and "some great writing."

"What’s the value of such encounters?" He asks, and the answer is that 

They make students vividly aware of new possibilities for intellectual and aesthetic fulfillment—pleasure, to give its proper name. They may not enjoy every book we read, but they enjoy some of them and learn that—and how—this sort of thing (Greek philosophy, modernist literature) can be enjoyable. They may never again exploit the possibility, but it remains part of their lives, something that may start to bud again when they see a review of a new translation of Homer or a biography of T. S. Eliot, or when “Tartuffe” or “The Seagull” in playing at a local theater.