"The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas"
- George Santayana
About this Quote
This quote by George Santayana speaks with the obstacle of education. It recommends that the difficulty lies in taking abstract ideas and turning them into concrete experiences. This is a difficult task, as concepts are typically intangible and tough to understand. It is the job of the educator to make these concepts available and to help trainees understand them in a significant way. This needs imagination and an understanding of how to make the ideas relevant to the trainee. It is inadequate to merely present the concepts; the teacher must also have the ability to help the trainee make connections in between the concepts and their own life experiences. This is the excellent trouble in education, and it is one that needs skill and devotion.
"To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization"