It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach.
Interpretation
Teaching requires more than just authority; it involves guiding and engaging students in learning.
This quote by John Locke highlights the difference between mere authority and effective teaching. While a tutor may be able to give orders and demand attention, true education comes from the ability to inspire and connect with students, fostering a deeper understanding of the material rather than simply enforcing compliance.
In practice
During a teacher training workshop, to emphasize the importance of engaging students.
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.
There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
He promoted the education of the parish clergy and wrote: He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.
The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
In examining witnesses, I learned to ask general questions so as to elicit details with powerful sensory associations: the colors, the sounds, the smells that lodge an image in the mind and put the listener in the burning house.
I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new things. I like the fact that if people really try they can figure out how to invent things that actually have an impact.
To put it simply and a bit crudely: Our economy is demanding more well-educated workers than our schools are providing. To attract this scarce resource, communities have to offer more than just jobs.
I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.
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