AceJohnny's Journal: The Wise Man on the Mountain (on teaching)

(quickly whipped up metaphor on the difficulty of teaching)

There once was a wise man who lived at the top of a mountain. He knew a Great Truth, that was bestowed upon him by Greater Powers. He would freely provide this Great Truth to anyone who sought him.

Pilgrims regularly came to him, seeking to learn some truths, and he would bestow his Great Truth to them. He would tell them: "Mass is Energy!". But the pilgrims would not understand him. They would think "wood which is mass can be burnt to give off heat, which is energy, that is what he meant!" or "energy of some mass is related to the square of the speed of the mass, but mass itself is not energy!". In the end, they thought him crazy.

One day, a man named Albert heard the old man's Great Truth, and worked on it for years and years. One day, after some of his hair had become white, he said "E=mc2!", and understood what the old man meant when he said "Mass is Energy!".

It had taken a very special man to start from what he knew to the understand the Great Truth, but it was not the wise man on the mountain. The wise man on the mountain could not bring pilgrims up to his great truth.

The role of a teacher is not to bestow Great Truths to his students, it is to bring those students to see those Great Truths by themselves. Only then will they understand.