Intellectual Hospitality

A quote from John Bennet (via Jason Clark)

“An indispensable characteristic of healthy learning communities, intellectual hospitality involves welcoming others through openness in both sharing and receiving claims to knowledge and insight. The sharing is marked by considerateness toward others and recognition that others’ distinctive individualities and overall experience are inherently relevant to their learning. The receiving is marked by awareness that however initially strange, the perspective of the other could easily supplement and perhaps correct one’s own work or even transform one’s self-understanding. Hospitable educators know that adverse evidence may have been overlooked, that the potential for self-deception always accompanies the desire to support one’s position, and that different and even foreign perspectives can provide breakthroughs in understanding.”