Bégaudeau asks the students to think about what they have learned and write down one thing to take away from the class, one concept, text, or idea that might have made a dif f erence. Th e class disperses, and one girl shuf f l es up to the front. Th e teacher looks at her expectantly and draws out her comment. “I didn’t learn anything,” she tells him without malice or anger, “nothing. . . . I can’t think of anything I learned.” Th e moment is a defeat for the teacher and a disappointment for the viewer, who wants to believe in a narrative of educational uplift, but it is a triumph for alternative pedagogies because it reminds us that learning is a two- way street and you cannot teach without a dialogic re-lation to the learner.

— The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam (Page 13)