Wednesday, March 10, 2021

‘The Kindling of a Flame, Not the Filling of a Vessel’

George Leef at National Review.

"That's how Socrates described his approach.* He thought that education ideally was a collaborative process in which the instructor draws out ideas in conversation with students rather than simply lecturing to them.
...
"That educational philosophy used to be more widely used than it is today. For one thing, it’s easier to just talk at students (or, worse yet, put power-point screens up for them to copy) than to try engaging their minds. For another, many educators are trying to fill vessels — they want students to believe what they believe."
*Or did he? -ed.

See 'William Butler Yeats? Plutarch? Socrates? Plato? Apocryphal?' at Quote Investigator.

"This family of statements probably originated with a passage in the essay “On Listening” in Moralia by the Greek-born philosopher Plutarch who lived between 50 and 120 AD." [footnote omitted]

See Plutarch, "Of Bashfuiness", from Moralia, Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 7, and "Contentment", from Moralia, Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 10; Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volumen 14, (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 13.

No comments:

Post a Comment