Why Teach? Not Knowing Is the Answer

Teaching often facilitates a relationship with one’s own ignorance: only by confronting the limits of my knowledge can I begin to ask questions, begin to imagine how questions will be asked of me. This is a confrontation I have learned to accept readily, as a useful practice, a gentle intellect and spiritual stretching in the safe and narrowed context of a classroom.

Kathryn Crim, “On Erving Goffman,” Threepenny Review, Fall 2010.

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