Thought 20MAY2008

WE LEARN BY DOING
Not many years ago, I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I am doing is "learning to play" the cello. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two different processes: (1) learning to play the cello; and (2) playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first process and begin the second. In short, I will go on "learning to play" until I have "learned to play" and then I will begin to play. Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.
John Holt - extracted from "Chicken Soup for the Soul', Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen, Health Communications, Inc., 1993.
It is the calm and silent water that drowns a man - Ashanti of Ghana