Learning
I propose that, ultimately, teaching a human being is an impossibility: I can learn at will, but I cannot teach at will. More generally, x can learn a, but y cannot teach a to x.
This is because x can always be motivated to not learn. There are many plausible motivations to not learn; one of the most common is that y tries to force x to learn a. For quite a lot of people I know, having to read Shakespeare was a perfect motivation for not learning to read Shakespeare.
Don't get me wrong: I realize that teachers can help with learning, and that good teachers can help tremendously. But there are learners without teachers, and there are no teachers without learners.
Take programming: the best teacher cannot teach programming to somebody who is motivated to not learn it. On the other hand, somebody who wants to learn programming will learn it even if, like me, he's already 40 years old when he decides to be motivated to learn programming. Once I started writing my first program, I had started to learn programming, and after having written many programs in four years, I had learned quite a lot. The learning was in actually doing it, not in what anybody was trying to teach me during that time.
And so it is with storytelling, too: it can only be learned by somebody doing it. To learn to tell stories, you have to tell stories. You have to invest massive amounts of time into writing a load of crap to even learn to recogize what a load of crap you just wrote. And that's for starters.
This is because x can always be motivated to not learn. There are many plausible motivations to not learn; one of the most common is that y tries to force x to learn a. For quite a lot of people I know, having to read Shakespeare was a perfect motivation for not learning to read Shakespeare.
Don't get me wrong: I realize that teachers can help with learning, and that good teachers can help tremendously. But there are learners without teachers, and there are no teachers without learners.
Take programming: the best teacher cannot teach programming to somebody who is motivated to not learn it. On the other hand, somebody who wants to learn programming will learn it even if, like me, he's already 40 years old when he decides to be motivated to learn programming. Once I started writing my first program, I had started to learn programming, and after having written many programs in four years, I had learned quite a lot. The learning was in actually doing it, not in what anybody was trying to teach me during that time.
And so it is with storytelling, too: it can only be learned by somebody doing it. To learn to tell stories, you have to tell stories. You have to invest massive amounts of time into writing a load of crap to even learn to recogize what a load of crap you just wrote. And that's for starters.
scheuring - 13. Sep, 00:48
