They free us, first, from at least some of the ravages of aging: the privilege of professing to the perpetually young is not a bad way to try to stay that way yourself. They also release us, if they’re good students and we’re good teachers, from our own pomposity: to teach without being talked back to is, I think, not to teach at all. They certainly inform and eventually instruct us: the most gratifying single moment in teaching comes, for me at least, with the realization that my student now knows more about a particular subject than I do. And of course, in the end, our students liberate us
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