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I agree with you here, Gioele. The balance between foundation and progress is an important one to strike. In theory, a full understanding of the foundations of

I agree with you here, Gioele. The balance between foundation and progress is an important one to strike. In theory, a full understanding of the foundations of any subject will, in the end, lead to a more complete mastery. However, if you do not give a learner enough "Why am I doing this?" to support their early stumbling steps, you risk losing them entirely. Imagine if you were forced to read the entire K&R C book before writing your first program. I know I wouldn't have made it. When I was a bartending instructor (past life), my boss told me this Yeats quote (misattributed I think): "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire".

taeric 13y ago
I think this has some implication that learning works strictly in a "foundations support advancements" model. The reality seems far more feedback oriented. It isn't that you should build a solid foundation before you move on. It is that later learning should help shape the foundations that you have already passed. Learning is a very active feedback cycle.
realitygrill 13y ago
The short version I've heard is: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." -Plutarch But upon some research, the context of the quote is even more interesting: "The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind."
- mattholtom 13y ago
  Very cool. The full context really takes the metaphor further.

taeric 13y ago

I think this has some implication that learning works strictly in a "foundations support advancements" model. The reality seems far more feedback oriented. It isn't that you should build a solid foundation before you move on. It is that later learning should help shape the foundations that you have already passed. Learning is a very active feedback cycle.

realitygrill 13y ago

The short version I've heard is: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." -Plutarch But upon some research, the context of the quote is even more interesting: "The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind."

mattholtom 13y ago
Very cool. The full context really takes the metaphor further.