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Quotation

You can't make people learn! by Stephen Downes

 



AuthorStephen Downes 
Search Amazon.comStephen Downes 
Search Amazon.co.ukStephen Downes 
SourceKnowledge Transfer 
Source DetailSee closing paragraphs of above blog post
CategoriesLearning
OtherQuotations

Yes, you can make a person utter the words. If you have a sufficiently large rifle, you can also make them goose-step and murder their enemies.

You can hound them into submission, you can brainwash them, make them believe in nutty causes and blow themselves up, make them memorize the spelling of fifty thousand words, lull them into believing that the Grand Canyon was created by a giant hand, convince them that people of a different skin colour are animals, almost anything.

You can shape people with no end of methods and mechanations physical and psychological.

But you can't use any of this to make them learn. You can't make them understand.

Understanding is a voluntary act. It is the act of a free person, inhabiting a world in which he or she can interact with a stimulating and diverse environment, creating a rich fabric of what we would call thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes, fears, and all the rest of it.

Understanding and learning are the results of a life-long process of experience and growth.

You can present the things you think are important and should be valued, but people must accept these for themselves. Freely.


Quotations are extremely effective at capturing and concisely communicating thoughts and ideas. They can be inspirational but more importantly quotations can help us reveal and assess the assumptions, values and beliefs that underlie the ways in which we perceive the world.

I have compiled over 800 quotations and short excerpts on this website. It is an eclectic mix but most of them are inspirational or insightful in nature and relate to knowledge, learning or personal development in some form.

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Quotations from Stephen Downes:

 Yes, you can make a person utter the words. If you have a sufficiently large rifle, you can also make them goose-step and murder their enemies.

You can hound them into submission, you can brainwash them, make them believe in nutty causes and blow themselves up, make them memorize the spelling of fifty thousand words, lull them into believing that the Grand Canyon was created by a giant hand, convince them that people of a different skin colour are animals, almost anything.

You can shape people with no end of methods and mechanations physical and psychological.

But you can't use any of this to make them learn. You can't make them understand.

Understanding is a voluntary act. It is the act of a free person, inhabiting a world in which he or she can interact with a stimulating and diverse environment, creating a rich fabric of what we would call thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes, fears, and all the rest of it.

Understanding and learning are the results of a life-long process of experience and growth.

You can present the things you think are important and should be valued, but people must accept these for themselves. Freely.

Stephen Downes 
Knowledge Transfer 



If you are interested in Knowledge Management, the Knowledge Café or the role of conversation in organizational life then you my be interested in this online book I am writing on Conversational Leadership
David Gurteen


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Thursday 28 March 2024
07:27 PM GMT