Abstract

Anyone who has read or studied with McDermott knows he used the word "pedagogy" all the time. For a long while, I did not quite understand why. To me it seemed that pedagogy simply described various specific strategies and techniques employed in the formal classroom. But after all these years with McDermott, I now think I understand better. For him, the whole of his life—his writing, teaching, cajoling, loving, advising—all of it was simply varieties of pedagogy, variations on what for him was the inexhaustible theme of teaching in the broadest sense. Experiments in pedagogy were one of his great projects—largely his motivation for getting up in the morning and heading off to the classroom. He found endless joy in...