Touching People
A good teacher — his goodness lies in the fact that he touches
so many different people. Not in the same way — they're
touched in different ways, but what he says is always along the
lines of the centrality of human interests....His concern is always
with the crucial issues that affect human life. And this is the
way words mean — the way they mean in our lives.
You need for good teaching this sense, I think, of centrality.
You can recognize such a teacher because the whole way in
which he deals with a work puts him at once in the very center
of the relation between that work and language and the
significance of language in culture. And it puts him at once into
all the areas in which you as a human being live and want to
live.
Teaching is one of those very unfortunate jobs, because by
the very necessity of the task you deal with human transience.
Every four years people disappear from your life. And the
temptation for a few students who say, "I want to study with
you." you know, "I want to attach myself" — this is a great
temptation and a very understandable one in a position in which
students are always flowing by you. But it seems to me the way
in which you must ultimately live up to it is that the students
who leave should leave with a sense of their own independence.
