The Art of Teaching and Learning - Part I

(Lecture given in Buenos Aires, August 19th, 1948 by Carlos Bernardo Gonzalez Pecotche*)

There is a great difference between the art of teaching and the art of learning although both are intimately linked. Usually, the person who starts to learn does not know why he does so; he thinks it is due to a need, a temperamental demand, a desire, or due to many other things that usually justify such a deed. But when he starts to create a bond with what he learns, an inner interest begins to awaken and at the same time, the dormant fibers of the soul are reactivated as it begins to search, through study, the stimuli that will create the ability to learn.

Nevertheless, what does a person learn and why does he learn it? These are two questions to which one cannot always give satisfactory answers. One learns and continues to learn by grabbing one knowledge here today and another one there tomorrow of similar or different kinds. In the first place, one learns to satisfy the needs of one's life in striving to achieve, with this knowledge a certain position and solve, at the same time, many situations presented by life itself. When the urge to study abates, one feels as if disorientation was produced in the mind; this occurs with the university student after obtaining his title, or with anyone who graduated in his specialty. In any case, when the part of life that was dedicated to studies ends, the activities to seek different professions begin and paralyzes the previous activity of the mind toward studies; many even forget the constant worry they had previously in acquiring one more cognition every day, becoming like those who, having traveled the length of a path, do not feel the need to take one more step as they fail to find the inventive of an objective that would propel them forward. This is one of the many causes that generate so much disorientation in human beings.

Furthermore, those who in addition to their professional studies learn other things, they often do so without being truly conscious of it. They treasure this or that cognition but later - with some exceptions - they do not know what to do with it; they do not know how to use it for their own good nor for the good of others. And so, one can see how they study haphazardly, here and there, without a guide to direct them toward a well-defined objective and allow them to use all that activity as useful training for themselves and for their fellowmen.

In presenting its teachings, Logosophy reveals the existence of an immense field, yet unknown to man, and in which he must penetrate. It also reveals that as he penetrates this immensity, which is Wisdom, that is, as he learns to do so, he can also teach. The reason is that the art of teaching consists in starting to teach oneself first, or said another way, as the person learns, he applies the cognition to himself and by teaching himself, he is able to teach others, later, in an efficient manner...

*Excerpt from the book "An Introduction to Logosophical Cognition" originally published in Spanish. Free Translation

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