"Small children are alert, curious, eager to investigate, playful. By the time they get to the university far too many of them doubt their own capacity to think, and see no connection between education and their real desires and fears. That is a calamity. The job of a teacher is to undo it (or earlier, to prevent it). Teaching is like bridge building. What is to be taught must somehow connect with what already matters to the student, yet of course something new must be learned."