Wednesday, September 09, 2009

The difference between teachability and subservience

This is not my normal kind of blog.. but Geez.. its been across many of them today and I can't quite find where it started.. but here it is.. And I have found yet another book I want to own and read.. or add to the never ending list of ones in progress. I wish I would have had this quote a few years back. :P

Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book (p. 140):

Teachability is often confused with subservience. A person is wrongly thought
to be teachable if he is passive and pliable. On the contrary, teachability is
an extremely active virtue. No one is really teachable who does not freely
exercise his power of independent judgment. He can be trained, perhaps, but not
taught. The most teachable reader is, therefore, the most critical. He is the
reader who finally responds to a book by the greatest effort to make up his own
mind on the matters the author has discussed.


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