Education Quote by John Sexton

A workshop framed as generosity is a familiar pose; Sexton flips it into a confession of self-interest, and that honesty is the point. By admitting he’s “probably gained more” than any participant, he dismantles the one-way hierarchy that haunts education: the expert dispensing wisdom to grateful novices. The line isn’t faux-humble; it’s a strategic redefinition of authority. He gets to keep the role of teacher while shifting the moral center of the room toward reciprocity.

The key move is “It is all about asking” - a blunt pivot away from performance and toward inquiry. Sexton is signaling a pedagogy where questions are not a preliminary step before the “real” lesson; they’re the engine. That’s a quiet rebuke to systems that reward certainty, speed, and polished answers. In workshop culture, “asking” also reads as a method of seeing: attention, curiosity, the ability to stay with ambiguity long enough for something sharper to emerge.

Context matters: Sexton, speaking as an educator (and, implicitly, a seasoned professional), is defending the workshop as more than professional development or networking. It’s an ecosystem where the teacher’s expertise is tested in real time by participants’ perspectives, needs, and misunderstandings. The subtext: teaching is a research practice. If he’s learning, the workshop isn’t a lecture in disguise; it’s a laboratory, and the most valuable credential in the room is the willingness to keep asking.