Van Doren on Teaching

The following is a quotation from the Autobiography of Mark Van Doren, quoted in "Mark Van Doren and American Classicism" by Jeffrey Hart, The New Criterion (XXIV.9, May 2006), pp. 24-25:

"From the beginning I assumed experience in freshmen. Perhaps the chief novelty consisted in my assumption that nothing was too difficult for students. Freshmen have had more experience than they are given credit for. They have been born, have parents, had brothers and sisters, been in love, been jealous, been angry, been ambitious, been tired, been hungry, been happy and unhappy, been aware of justice and injustice. Well, the great writers handled just such things, and they did so in basic human language men must use whenever they feel and think. The result, if no teacher prevents its happening, was that freshmen learned about themselves. And so did the teachers, at least if they read and talked like men of the world, simply and humbly, without assumptions of academic superiority."