Listening is the key to so many delights: learning, seeing, experiencing. So many ills stem from too little listening: the insecurity that makes people petty and warlike, catastrophes that could otherwise have been averted, the smaller tragedies of experiences missed because we were not entirely there.
Too much “listening” is also problematic. I mean here the passive listening of the student who thinks the professor has all the information, all the answers. The student’s mind is not in the classroom so it may be filled; it is in the company of other minds so it may engage, so it may participate in the play of information, of answers, of questions.