By describing a generalized view of good teaching, I may unintentionally signal to you an intolerance of idiosyncracy. I do not with to do so. I am also concerned that I may give the impression that I thing teaching per se is important. However, with these reservations expressed, let me proceed. Brilliant teaching, in my view, at its heart reflects scholarship, personal integrity and the ability to communicate with the young.
Scholarship is both the grasp of a realm of knowledge and a habit of mind.
An effective teacher provokes both from his students. But particularly the latter, as it is a habit of mind, rather than facts, which endure in a person over a lifetime. Scholarship is not only an affair of the classroom, but, at its best, is a way of life, one which is marked by respect for evidence and for logic, by inquisitiveness and the genius to find new meaning in familiar data, and by the ability to see things in context, to relate specificities to generalities, facts to theories, and theories to facts. The second characteristic of great teaching is integrity , in at least two of its separate meanings. These qualities are fundamental, of course, to the good life for anyone, but they play a special role in the behavior of those of us who inevitably, as we live together with them, influence younger people by our example.