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WRITINGS AND TEACHINGS

KENNETH WESTHUES
Professor Emeritus
University of Waterloo, Canada

Updated with quotes for January 2025:

Classic:
If leadership does not mean coercion in any form, if it does not mean controlling, protecting or exploiting, what does it mean? It means, I (think) freeing. The greatest service the teacher can render the student is to increase his freedom — his free range of activity and thought and his power of control.
— Mary Parker Follett, "The Teacher-Student Relation," 1928.

Direct:
Reciprocity insists that in the pedagogical scale of values, first place be reserved for every individual student's autonomous intellectual development, whether that is in the direction we approve, or not.
— "On Trying Not to Be a Kierkegaardian Professor," presentation in Atlanta, Georgia, November 1985.

Garden moment for January 2025:

Orchids manage to keep blooming in northern Florida even in January. This one hangs from a tree at Cedar Lakes Woods and Gardens near Williston. There are thousands of orchid species. Aficionados know many of their names. I only know they are beautiful.

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