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by skydhash 727 days ago

  THEN SAID A teacher, Speak to us of Teaching. 
  And he said: 
  No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. 
  The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. 
  If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. 
  The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding. 
  The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it. 
  And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither. 
  For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. 
  And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
1 comments

> No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

That's called "zone of proximal development" in pedagogy.

However, "that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge" is often a consequence of things that were revealed to you previously.

When you learn, you could probably make any specific step alone, but you cannot make all the steps alone.

I think it more about about the difference between knowledge and understanding. You accumulate knowledge by yourself or with the help of a teacher. But the leap from knowledge to understanding is always done by your own mind. The teacher’s help is only a better presentation of the information. Understanding is a step by step process, you’re just not constrained to a single path. And most of the times they converge and overlap.

The nice thing about learning, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.