Original message bounced. Forwarding it, please make sure to use the subscribed address for posting to this list. Or please join the list if you haven't done so already.

------------------------

From: "Gary Fisher" gafisher@sprynet.com To: squeakland@squeakland.org References: 7807A9C83D51004B82410A0147EDED2602754306@tdsbex32 Subject: Re: My contribution to recent comments/questions, etc. Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 08:07:07 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106

Dear Sheine;

Books cannot contain knowledge; at best, they may contain information, but in isolation even that is usually not reliably transmitted by a book. The dialog of Socrates and Phaedrus is relevant here -- how much better to learn, to acquire knowledge, from someone who, like Socrates himself, could present not just information but understanding. And yet, most of us would have no knowledge of that dialog had the information not been recorded in a book.

The learning of music follows a similar course. I could read a thousand scores, but without a living, knowledgeable (and patient) teacher the best I could learn might be to mechanically and imperfectly reproduce the patterns of sounds others have made, and that only on the most constraining of instruments. Written materials might impart sufficient information to play a scale on a piano, for instance, but it is hard to imagine doing the same on a violin without a violinist as a guide. (To refer to the likely result as a raucous Squeak might put me in danger of overextending my analogy.

Dialog with a fifth grader who understands (contains real knowledge of) Squeak would be infinitely preferable to trying to apprehend that knowledge with book in one hand and mouse in the other, but the world's supply of such fifth graders, or of any knowledgeable teacher, with the time and patience to sit at one's side and impart that knowledge is at this point still rather limited. Yet to simply fire up Squeak and dive in, while perhaps sufficient for the highly motivated child, is just not productive for those of us whose creative learning abilities have already been damaged.

Books such as those already mentioned are helpful in organizing the information needed to develop a knowledge and understanding of Squeak; while no substitute for practice and at best an imperfect adjunct to "live" instruction, such books can at least help us over the real and imagined hurdles until we know which questions to ask. I very much look forward to the upcoming books mentioned by Kim, especially with the knowledge the authors will in all likelihood be available on one or more of the Squeak lists to help turn some of that information into understanding.

Gary