Teller explains how performance and discomfort make education come alive

The trend of making schools "safe places" to protect students from feeling uncomfortable is a bad idea, says Teller, the silent member of the magic comedy duo Penn and Teller, and a former schoolteacher. Here's a snip from an essay in The Atlantic:

And if Shakespeare (or Catullus or Vergil) makes students uncomfortable? Thats a good thing, Teller said. Learning, like magic, should make people uncomfortable, because neither are passive acts. Elaborating on the analogy, he continued, Magic doesnt wash over you like a gentle, reassuring lullaby. In magic, what you see comes into conflict with what you know, and that discomfort creates a kind of energy and a spark that is extremely exciting. That level of participation that magic brings from you by making you uncomfortable is a very good thing.

As we were on the subject of discomfort I asked Teller what he thinks of schools efforts to protect students from discomfort as they learn through censoring teachers content and requirements for trigger warnings. For the first time in our conversation, Teller illustrated the power of his trademark silence, and the line went quiet.

Just as Id begun to think wed been disconnected, he replied,

When I go outside at night and look up at the stars, the feeling that I get is not comfort. The feeling that I get is a kind of delicious discomfort at knowing that there is so much out there that I do not understand and the joy in recognizing that there is enormous mystery, which is not a comfortable thing. This, I think, is the principal gift of education.