Why Teach? Quotes

“The English major reads because, as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is not enough.”
― Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education

“My students, alas, usually lack the confidence to acknowledge what would be their most precious asset for learning: their ignorance.”
― Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education

“Unless we professors change our ways and stop seeking respectability and institutional standing at the expense of genuine human impact, we are destined, as Tennyson has it, to rust unburnished, never to shine in use.”
― Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education

“At a certain point, professors stopped being usefully sensitive and became more like careful retailers who have it as a cardinal point of doctrine never to piss the customer off.”
― Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education

“How did the students respond to being treated like customers? They didn’t seem to mind at all. From what one could see, they loved it.”
― Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education

“For someone growing up in America now, there are few available alternatives to the cool consumer worldview.”
― Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education