Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

But her [Stein’s] account of first being invited to teach is revealing. The
invitation was the result of an angry blowup upon meeting Robert Hutchins and
Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago. This is the only place I can recall
in her work where she represents herself as losing control. Adler’s list of "all
the ideas that had been important in the world’s history" causes Stein first to
get "excited" and then "violent" (EA, 205-7). She is invited to teach Adler’s
class the next week, where, predictably, she triumphs. Afterward she explains
to Hutchins: "You see why they talk to me is that I am like them I do not know
the answer, you you say you do not know but you do know if you did not know
the answer you could not spend your life in teaching but I I really do not know
… that is the trouble with governments and Utopia and teaching, the things not
that can be learnt but that can be taught are not interesting" (EA, 213).
I’d be very curious to hear how others go about basing their teaching on what
they don’t know. Or how various ones of you balance teaching between an
orientation toward a "delivery" of what you know and a shared exploration of
what you don’t know. Personally, I hope that Stein is wrong. It is, I hope,
possible to sustain a career in teaching precisely by basing that activity in a
substantial amount of not knowing. (Though such an approach has a great
capacity to annoy and baffle some students.) If not–if Stein’s right–my career’s
about over….