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Inclinations

Priscilla Fagan

Learning

"Wherever there are beginners and experts, old and young, there is some kind of learning going on, and some sort of teaching. We are all pupils and we are all teachers."
Gilbert Highet, scholar and writer.

As I cruise the halls of WVU and read the message boards, wearing the new hat of Education Coordinator, a question I hear repeated is, "How can we learn without an instructor in the classroom?" But what Mr. Highet has to say is so true. We learn from each other. I always contend that the special quality of WVU is writers helping writers. We're all at different levels in our writing. We pass on what we've learned and we learn from what other's have passed on. Surely we have something to gain from this. Writers, whether published or not, are continually honing their skills. Improving with each critique, rejection letter and even success.

William Sloane says: "Publication is not necessarily a sign of success." And William Saroyan takes it a step further. "Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again."

It's humbling to know Michelangelo's favorite saying was: "I am still learning." After each masterpiece, each novel, each hit song, each new model automobile, the designer, artist, writer must reinvent him or herself. If you choose to say, I've nothing more to learn, you might as well hang it up right then and there.

"We think we learn from teachers, and we sometimes do. But the teachers are not always to be found in school or in great laboratories. Sometimes what we learn depends upon our own powers of insight." Loren Eisley taken from The Hidden Teacher (1978) I know I've found that to be true. I took the Mythic Structure course (F401), The Heroes Journey by Christopher Vogel, and suddenly the light bulb went on in my brain. The theory made perfect sense to me, my writing began to fall into place. It seemed so simple.

Baltasar Gracian said, "Make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction." It sounds as if Baltasar may have had a vision of WVU in 1647. So, what is the definition of a teacher? Richard Bach defines it as: "Every real teacher is myself in disguise." Hmm, I really have to think about that one.

Confucius says: "If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others."

What makes a teacher? Emerson quips: "I pay the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys that educate my son." Well, okay we know what he means by that, but there is a lesson here. I can remember some professors in college who didn't have a clue how to teach, what I learned was from the reading assignments and the discussion I had with the other students.

But now let's ask ourselves what makes a writer? Jessamyn West maintains, "There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. (1957)

I'll finish with this quote from Ivan Illich which I believe might just be a cornerstone of WVU. "Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting."

Til next month I remain,
Priscilla, the eternal optimist