Sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago.
(Dionysius Cato 3.1)

A life without learning is almost the image of death.

(pron = SEE-nay dohk-TREE-nah WEE-tah KWAH-see MOHR-tis ih-MAH-go)

Comment: Someone whose life and work I deeply respect often reminds me: "The
true teacher cannot teach you anything ... but can only remind you of what, on
some level, you already know ..."

This would seem to go against what I do as a teacher in a classroom apparently
teaching students things they don't know yet. That is what I do.

And, it's not. I am finding, the longer I teach, that I really am not teaching
students things about Latin (or other dimensions of life, communication,
culture, etc) that they don't know anything about. When we all, the so called
"teacher" and the so called "students" sink deeply into who we are and what we
are gathered to do, we begin to have "aha" moments. I am learning to read
these aha moments not so much as that the student has learned something new,
but that "getting it" (as middle schoolers call it) means that they have
finally connected and "re-membered" this thing they already knew.

Consider this: can we really recognize anything that we don't, at some level,
already know? What does "recognize" mean? From the Latin, of course it means
to "know again". So, when I teach a student that Latin direct objects are in
the accusative case and that often means an "m" on the end of the word, and the
student "gets it", have I taught him/her something new, or have I simply
assisted in his/her re-membering?

I am asking questions only rhetorically. This is the conclusion that I come to
over and over again. And from this view point, a life without learning, that
is, without erudition (drawing things out of your raw, undeveloped self, from
your beginnings), we really are dead.