An instructor has a special responsibility when introducing students to another culture. He/she isn’t simply talking about something that’s "out there", waiting passively for the student to internalize it, but about a whole interconnected grid of ideas, memories, artifacts, customs, ceremonies and so forth, all of which are emotionally significant for the people who have grown up with them. In the case of middle eastern cultures that grid is often something that students have their own preconceptions about, and these preconceptions might be well-informed or badly-informed. In teaching Persian culture and literature to undergraduates I try to get them as far as possible to "walk in the other person’s shoes" for a while, to see things from what, for most of them, will be an unfamiliar perspective.