"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had else where its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy
But He beholds the light and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel still is nature's priest
And by the vision, splendid,
Is on His way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of day"
From Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
For me, these words sum up all that I believe is both potentially available and all that is wrong today with our view of "learning".
School as a Prison House. Nature as our teacher. Our inherent knowledge that only has to be remembered.
