"Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it to concoct." What is the point of a child knowing how to mimic his or her tutor, when the child cannot use the lessons beyond the classroom?

Historically, Montaigne sees Socrates' model of teaching by questioning as the ideal as proven and accepted as the best way to train the mind, rather than to simply stuff the mind with data. He laments "the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, while the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a tutor to correct this error, and, that at the...
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