David Porter's letter in arq 5/1 was timely. In recognizing the benefits to be gained from the ‘two-way street’ that connects architectural education and practice, Porter follows on from Robin Webster's plea in arq 4/2 for ‘ordinary’ practitioners to teach ‘a high standard of ordinariness’. Webster's letter was provoked by Dean Hawkes' paper, ‘The architect and the academy’ (arq 4/1), in which he quoted Kahn, Zumthor and Scarpa on education, all regarding teaching as a process of (self) discovery.