What if we were to take seriously the possibility that our students have a rich and authoritative inner life and tried to nourish it rather than negate it?

I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.

The economy of gift, of art, is fundamentally opposed to the economy of war.

Finding voice is a socially responsible political act. We don't just do it for ourselves. And helping someone to find voice demands a spiritual partnership with that seeker. It's an exercise of compassion.

What if we were to take seriously the possibility that our students have a rich and authoritative inner life and tried to nourish it rather than negate it?

Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?

If you have a big splash of ecstasy in your life every day you are going to teach students something finer than "buy low/sell high". Maybe you'll teach them, not by what you say but by who you are, to live their lives as a standing affront to the ravaging mercantile mentality.