To Be A Teacher

To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and the way he understands it, in case you have not understood it before.  Or if you have understood it before, you allow him to subject you to an examination so that he may be sure you know your part.

-- Søren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855), Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, as quoted in Kierkegaard Anthology by Robert Bretall (1946), page 335