I deconstruct the myth of development that presupposes a chronology from immaturity to maturity. More generally, I suggest this imagined march of progress serves as a foundational wish for any education that is at once defined as the movement from ignorance to knowledge and serves to defend against the problem of regression, hatred, and not learning from experience. I propose a view of development as uneven and as "out of joint," made stranger by the postmodern university where teacher education occurs. I then consider development as a problem of trying to know the mind that resists being known, as responsibility for the other, and as capable of containing frustration, or experience. To make this argument, I juxtapose three views of development that centre the question of uncertainty and unevenness: William James the psychologist who focused on the mind, Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who focused on the world, and Wilfred Bion, the psychoanalyst, who focused on affective relationships. With these views, I propose an ethics of teacher education.