From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed,  8 Feb 1995 17:01:11 -0500
From: forsyth@plan9.cs.york.ac.uk forsyth@plan9.cs.york.ac.uk
Subject: educational philosophy applied to flames
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 076f3cae-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19950208220111.-vub_uNhCS-GJLAoPLBkLtyuVOTIXPi4f4-hvH1_d0Y@z>

[discussing pre-Socratic philosophers]
``What there is in an educational setting of that kind is
a cult of the non-explicit, and the basis of it is the assumption
that we learn only from those who do not teach.
That is, such advisers, or gurus, do not teach in the sense
of systematically answering questions.  When you answer a question,
you consolidate the mental level on which the question is asked:
the efforts of such spiritual advisers are rather to keep prodding
the student into making more and more adequate questions, or,
at any rate, less and less inadequate questions.''
	Northrop Frye, Divisions on a Ground, pp. 126-7

(he goes on to observe that ``the teacher who refuses
to answer a question has to have tremendous authority given him
by his students if he is to get away with it''.)


harrumph.

back to technology: anyone written any interesting Plan 9 programs recently?