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March 18, 2010
a provocation is what teaching is
What should a teacher be? A person with a summons, with a calling, provocare. A provocation is what teaching is – to call you out. A good Anglo-Saxon expression: I shall call you out. “Have at you, Sir, be on guard.” Provocation: You must always pitch above the head of your student until his fingers ache with reaching. I think it is the most exciting process in the world. I. A. Richards said, "The two most complex processes on this planet are the mathematics of a string quartet and the translation of a Chinese philosophic sentence." He may be right. They are worth pursuing, and are in certain respects wholly familiar to Plato when he writes over the doors of the Academy, “Let no one enter here who is not a geometer.” Wholly familiar to Plato, wholly familiar to Pythagoras, with his hope that music would open the doors to cosmology and to the problem of the inner harmony of human beings. For others, of course, there will be a post-humanity, which, I am not altogether sorry, I will not live to see.
George Steiner
Posted by amin at March 18, 2010 6:17 AM