2 Reviews
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 OptimusX rated 16 months agouniversity - Why we should understand, and even encourage,
a certain sort of erotic intensity between
student and professor
- Soaressilva rated 16 months agouniversity
- "Love is a flame, and the good teacher raises in students a burning desire for his or her approval and attention, his or her voice and presence, that is erotic in its urgency and intensity. The professor ignites these feelings just by standing in front of a classroom talking about Shakespeare or anthropology or physics, but the fruits of the mind are that sweet, and intellect has the power to call forth new forces in the soul. Students will s ometimes mistake this earthquake for sexual attraction, and the foolish or inexperienced or cynical instructor will exploit that confusion for his or her own gratification. But the great majority of professors understand that the art of teaching consists not only of arousing desire but of redirecting it toward its proper object, from the teacher to the thing taught. Teaching, Yeats said, is lighting a fire, not filling a bucket, and this is how it gets lit. The professor becomes the student's muse, the figure to whom the labors of the semester -- the studying, the speaking in class, the writing -- are consecrated. The alert student understands this. In talking to one of my teaching assistants about these matters, I asked her if she'd ever had a crush on an instructor when she was in college. Yes, she said, a young graduate student. "And did you want to have sex with him?" I asked. "No," she said, "I wanted to have brain sex with him." "
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