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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: Grainne who wrote (25305)10/7/1998 7:27:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte  Read Replies (1) of 108807
 
>There are essentially two ways of looking at children--as vessels to be filled with facts,
or as flames where the desire for learning burns brightly, until it is extinguished
(sometimes snuffed out by that same vessel overturned). While I prefer the analogy of
the flame, both theories can work for liberal arts students. However, the vessel filled
with facts is the only one where a child can end up as a scientist. <

I think that the choice between two such metaphors is a tad restrictive. I prefer a different metaphor which combines qualities of both the vessel and the flame. Let's say a person's mind (including but not limited to a child's) is a forge or a kiln. Facts are like logs or coals fed in the bottom. These fuel the fire - creativity - which is used to work the ore or clay of everyday life into things useful and/or beautiful.
A sound fact base is the fuel - without it there is no flame. The creative process which springs from it is the real motor of achievement - be it a thing of engineering or of poetry. Jmho!

I disagree that a poem or painting is worth much without context. This context must come from learning human history! The history of language, of ideas, of art and acts before and during.

I remember going through an art museum when I was eight. Buncha walls with a buncha pictures in really ugly frames. It was a chore. Now that I had two semesters of art histoty in college (and before that some rudimentary "regular" history in school which I think was totally necessary to provide some sort of yardstick) I would see these pictures quite differently. Heck, I might even have an insight or two into the aesthetic principles which went into the frames!
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