The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the difference in teaching methods between art and science, emphasizing the challenge of conveying intuitive understanding versus technical skills.
Richard P. Feynman illustrates the contrast between teaching in creative subjects like art and technical subjects like physics. He points out that art teachers often struggle to impart the instinctive essence of drawing through direct guidance, while physics teachers tend to focus too heavily on teaching methods and skills without fostering a deeper, intuitive understanding of the subject's underlying principles. This reflects a broader conversation about the nature of learning and teaching in different disciplines.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about educational methods at a teacher training workshop.
The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
My father paid for my education; then he made it clear that I was on my own.
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.
There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do, instead of what he cannot do.
So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.
I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.
I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.