Subject: commonplace

From: "J.S." Dorward <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 94 9:59:51 BST

Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
                   By Robert M. Pirsig

Note :- words in capitals are in italics in the book.

[Paedrus] "As a result of his experiments [with classes of
English students] he concluded that imitation was a real evil
that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could
begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion.
Little children didn't have it. It seemed to come later on,
possible as a result of school itself.
     That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the
more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you
don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade.
Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you
were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to
convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the
essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your
own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get
you anything - from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned
against it.
     He discussed this with a professor of psychology who
lived next door to him, an extremely imaginative teacher, who
said, 'Right. Eliminate the whole degree-and-grading system
and then you'll get real education.'"

>From p196-197, transcribed by [email-masked].