To avoid this error, the error of assuming that that to be widely read and to be well read are the same thing, we must consider a certain distinction… - Mortimer J. Adler

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To avoid this error, the error of assuming that that to be widely read and to be well read are the same thing, we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning. ... In the history of education, men have often distinguished between learning by instruction and learning by discovery. ... Discovery stands to instruction as learning without a teacher stands to learning through the help of one. In both cases the activity of learning goes on in the one who learns. It would be a mistake to suppose that discovery is active learning, and instruction passive. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading. This is so true, in fact, that a better way to make the distinction clear is to call instruction “aided discovery.”