Out of term—that is to say for about twenty-eight weeks in the year—we are free to philosophise, or to do anything else that takes our fancy; for our jobs are secure and cannot be taken from us until we reach the age of sixty-seven, unless we are guilty of some outrageous personal misconduct. We are under no pressure—beyond that of ambition—to write books or articles. In some other places the staff are in danger of spoiling their chances of promotion, or even further employment, unless they keep up a constant output of published writing; and this naturally inflates the publishers' catalogues. I will not say that in Oxford no philosopher ever writes anything unless he has something to say; but at any rate he cannot claim that he has to do it to earn a living. We regard teaching, not writing, as our main job—what we are paid for.
What, then, is the effect of this system on the student and on his tutor? It is profound. The student is very soon made to realise that everything that he says in an essay has to be justified before a highly skilled and usually merciless critic, not only in respect of its truth, but also in respect of relevance, accuracy, significance and clarity. Anything that is put in to fill in space, or which is ambiguous or vague or pretentious, or which contains more sound than significance, or whose object is anything else but to express genuine thought, is ruthlessly exposed for what it is. The tutor knows that he cannot be sure of getting his pupil to see the truth; for, even if it were not possible in philosophy for there to be sincere differences of opinion about the truth, nobody can see the truth about a philosophical question until he has by his own efforts reached the point from which it is visible. What the tutor can do is to teach his pupil to think effectively; to express his thought clearly to himself and to others; to make distinctions where there are distinctions to be made, and thus avoid unnecessary confusion—and not to use long words (or short ones) without being able to explain what they mean. Enormous stress is laid on style, not in the sense of literary elegance—for this is esteemed of small value—but in the sense of an effective, unambiguous, clear and ordered expression of one's thought, which cannot be achieved unless the thought itself has the same qualities.
The effect of this treatment on the student is what might be expected. But its effect on the tutor himself should not escape notice. He has continually to set an example of the virtues which he is seeking to inculcate. Though he may have been studying a question for twenty years or more, he has hour after hour—sometimes for five hours or even seven in a day—to explain it afresh to a succession of people who are considering it for the first time. For a historian or a language-scholar such a routine might well be called deadening—though for a man whose vocation it is to teach, the task has a continuing and absorbing interest. But for a philosopher this life is just what is required to perfect his understanding of the subject. I can honestly say that I have learnt more from my pupils than I have from books.
(R. M. Hare, "A School for Philosophers," chap. 3 in Essays on Philosophical Method, New Studies in Practical Philosophy, ed. W. D. Hudson [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972], 38-53, at 40-1 [essay first published in 1960])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 