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Of what remains uncensored from here gets increasingly blocked in the USA.
- And yet there are rumors that the local administration is working on merely mirroring approved contents in a coming national intranet.
That would mean good-bye to the internet.
And they call their policies "Democracy" in the same time, ain´t it funny. Oh and, guess who delivers that knowledge, special education and technology to castrate the net and sniff out tel-phone lines etc. of the people of such "democracies". Again countries that call themselves "democratic". Like Germany. Just besides.
Here's the same Yale University lecture on You Tube.
What's the big deal? If I had access this in college I would have dropped out and stayed home and watched 2000 hours of you tube and given myself an art history degree. You can stay home and get smarter than you can in school. many art historians are creating free sites for lectures.
James Cahill former UC Berkeley Art Historian created a free lecture series available on You Tube. You want to know about China? Watch all 40 hours of his lectures.
Why go to school? There are no jobs to had after college. Just get smart watching you tube and talk to other people about things you like. Wash dishes or work as garbage men and guitar makers.
Its a great amount of sources and they seem to be well done. However they just cover the first 2 semester. So for example if you study engineering, the knowledge there gets you through the first 2 semester and half of the third, the rest is either more specialized in one field or they dont have the field at all (material science, engineering,...)
And please lets not forget: real useful knowledge, call it experience, starts being created if you solve a problem on your own. Hence the projects/presentations are often (not always) more rewarding than the lectures itself. Book knowledge gets you only so far. And last thing: there are libraries, most of them contain about 5-100 times more information than what is on that site IMO. The library of my college is actually small so that would be only about 10 times i guess. Getting the information is not a real problem; people want to be spoon fed.
ps: i wish we had SATs in Germany. Much fairer and you can prepare yourself to it.
You are probably right in that not all of actual knowledge can be found on the internet ( for free ), and yet I count myself to the ones who appreiciate the merrits of the net ( which in the end you likely belong to as well, I suppose).
Some years ago it appeared fashionable to summrize the outcome of the internet as lacking this and that and it containing too much misconstruction / layman interpretation and distortion.
Partially true, yet all in all the invention of the internet seems to be of great benefit to the people. And the better you know how to search and to select sophisticated sources the more valuable it can be. ( There seem to be different ways of how to make use of search functions, apparently making quite a difference if you know how to. And peripheral knowledge like knowing which institutions are having a ledge on a certain matter etc. must be helpful too.)
All in all, the feature of the internet can be an unparalleled source of information and exchange, very helpful not only in sight of special subjects but also on actual societal matters / events.
With all that you can estimate the actual degree of "democracy" of a state, depending on how it treats this medium. The more sites they block, the more their bailiffs put pressure on providers or throttle the bandwith / force through ridiculous pricings yet for dial in conncetions, the more spyware they implant into your computer etc.pp. the less democratic they can be.
Letting aside for a moment the little regimes that suffocate the new medium to out of recognition, just look at the big brother dictature of the US who won´t get tired of pretending to be a democracy.
Obviously any computer or internet company that gains a degree of popularity gets to deal with the states sniffers, and is being made to serve as a tool to them. Be it Microsoft who seems obligatory to provide paths in their applications for the echolon & co. to access users computers on the fly, Acrobat who seem to have been grounded by henchmen for spying out people in the first place, or popular search engines like Yahoo and Google who track you down to your last click and provide it all to the sniffers. - Yahoo even being so filthy to hand over user data of Chinese opposition to the Chinese government. ( I think the wicked moron who grounded it to have been a US-residential Chinese himself, ain´t it.)
The US rulers´control paranoia meanwhile has resulted in tenth of thousands of enormously expensive ( just echolon alone costing over $ 40 billions per year ) states spying and tracking organisations - with hosts of employees at cockaigne salaries, mind you -, who are gathering so much user data that in fact systematical overlook has been lost long since.
In the same time all that contributes near zero to nailing down the huge harm through economic criminals. In the opposite, US secret services supply US companies with snatched pre patented inventions of international firms. - And at times even offer them deals of bondage by trading thelike material, like in a case of just lately. Don´t wonder why.
Criminal action makes for no big deal, and the more further up the chain the lesser so; but dare you mentioning only once that you don´t buy into what is being camouflaged as democracy, requesting justice, fairness and humanism and your delinquent file won´t be rested to the end of your days.
What were we about? Right, the internet. Greatest medial tool for a humane, educated and networking society ever, and thus seriously threatend at that.
I think I should expand on my statement, some aspects of collage are obsolete. What is interesting is that access information in lecture form is astounding both in content and quantity. But it comes without a guide in the form of teacher. I think what college dos is not just primarily give you information, but teaches you how to interpret, apply and think critically about information.
The teachers teach you methods, not merely dump tons of data in you. But the problem is what is the cost of that guidance and is it worth it? Has college become only and expansive way of placing or purchasing your way in to a network where you can be hired or is it truly about learning a critical methodologies to further your knowledge and how we work?
I think there are some advantages to school being taken out of school and out on You Tube for everyone to access. A high school student from a poor area can view a lecture series that orginates at Yale University for free. This is good, but what if they have questions or want credit for applying themselves to the task of learning that material?
What are the differences between Art/ English and Science in the ways that internet access to lectures can be helpful or fully absorbed?
What are the differences between Art/ English and Science in the ways that internet access to lectures can be helpful or fully absorbed?
Having spent a lifelong career in science and engineering, and having been taught mathematics by a method that was simultaneously the most radical and the most effective, I'll take a crack at it.
I'm merely an amateur of the humanities, so I can't comment on how effective lectures are for learning these subjects. A good lecture can certainly stimulate thought and prompt further reading and discussion.
I once read that to appreciate poetry, one must be a poet en passant. That is, to appreciate the poet's talent and ability, one must try to express the thought in the poet's form, but in a different way.
In science and mathematics participation is even more important. Lectures are largely useless in imparting scientific or mathematical knowledge. The author of one of the greatest series of lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman admitted this is true.
What is required to learn a technical subject is the solution of problems--or even wrestling with problems the student can't solve. Trying to learn a technical subject without working problems would be like trying to learn a language without ever trying to speak or write it.
I was taught mathematics by R. L. Moore. He was arguably not only the greatest teacher of mathematics in America in the 20th century, but also arguably one of the greatest and most influential mathematics teachers of all time. Look him up on Wikipedia, I won't belabor the point.
I took five courses from Moore, starting with freshman calculus and going on to advanced topology. During those five years Moore may have lectured a total of 30 minutes. Instead of standing at the board and talking, Moore assigned a brilliantly conceived sequence of problems.
In graduate courses, which I started right after freshman calculus, some of the problems assigned had never been solved, despite the greatest mathematicians breaking their teeth on them for decades, or even centuries. Moore never pointed out that a problem was unsolved. He knew from experience that once in a while a student would solve one, and make a name for him/herself.
Class consisted of Moore calling upon the student least likely to have a solution, followed by the next least likely, and so on, until someone volunteered to give a solution. In calculus and undergraduate analysis (which I skipped) Moore stood at the board and the student told him his solution. If the student left a loophole, Moore didn't criticize the student, he just took a wrong turn through the loophole. The student would probably object. Moore would invite him or her to repair the fault. If the student could not, Moore would call on the next student. If Moore thought the earlier flaw merited it, he might comment for a minute or two.
By the time students were in graduate courses, the volunteer was invited to go to the board and present his or her solution. Moore relied upon the rest of the students to detect and criticize any flaws. Moore just served as moderator.
This utterly radical approach produced more distinguished research mathematicians and had more influence on mathematics worldwide than any since David Hilbert. One of my profs studied with Hilbert, and described Hilbert working together with a group of students on the solution of problems. Hilbert's method didn't emphasize individualism and competition as much as Moore's, though there certainly was competition, but it showed a similar deep understanding of the necessity for the student to grapple with the concepts.
An experienced mathematician or physicist reads a research paper or an expository book with pen and paper in hand, filling in gaps, testing ideas and the reader's understanding of them. Any serious educational text in math or physics contains a liberal helping of exercises, ranging from those that just review the ideas presented in the text, to those that will stump all but the best students.
When the solutions to the most difficult problems are discussed, the students who were unable to solve them, but who grappled with them, will better perceive and appreciate the insights required.
Trying to learn a technical subject just by attending lectures would be like trying to play one of Paco's bulerias just by listening to the recording, without putting in the hours required to master the techniques and the compás.
$40-billion sounds like the entire budget of the National Security Agency, which is secret, of course. "Echelon" is just the computer network that handles data collected in communication intercepts and signals intercepted from military and civilian equipment other than communication networks.
The NSA gets up to a lot of stuff other than communication collection and analysis. This has included some stuff in the past that neither of us approves of, and no doubt some stuff going on right now that neither of us would approve of, nor even know about.
One incident that I know of, probably related to the NSA, had to do with a medium size contract from the Brazilian government in the 1990s, called SIVAM.
At a multi-national conference on the environment, Brazil came in for some criticism on the deforestation of the Amazon. Brazil complained that (at the time) they were a relatively poor third world country who couldn't afford the technical means to enforce environmental policies.
The USA and a couple of Scandinavian countries put together a fund of $1-billion to install satellite monitoring stations and an anti-drug air traffic control and surveillance network in the Amazon. The money was entrusted to the Brazilian government, but the terms of the grant were that it could only be used for the stated purpose.
There were two major competitors for the work, Thomson of France and Raytheon in the USA. It came out in leading Brazilian news media that telephone conversations had been recorded of Thomson officials offering bribes to Brazilian legislative and administration officials. It was quite a scandal in Brazil. The contract went to Raytheon.
I was among those who strongly suspected that the NSA was involved in the telephone taps. By their public Congressional charter, it was part of their job. Nowadays essentially all international communications are carried on fiber optic cables, but in the 1990s most of it went via satellite, which would have made the interceptions technically quite simple.
I knew the details of the SIVAM contract and some of the negotiations because I worked for Raytheon at the time, and I was offered the job of overseeing installation of $3/4-billion worth of equipment in the Amazon. I turned down the job for personal and technical reasons unrelated to the wiretaps, but continued to work for Raytheon.
I was at a reasonably high level, but never came across any corrupt practices at Raytheon in the work they did for US and European governments. I thought it was probably in the Brazilian public interest to know of corruption in their government. However corruption would have been known from daily experience by the average Braziiian, without any help from the NSA.
But I also had a fair amount of experience in Latin America, and if I had been seriously interested in the SIVAM job, I would have made discreet inquiries into how the graft was being handled.
The Raytheon operational headquarters of the project was in Manaus, smack in the middle of the Amazon jungle. That was one of the reasons I didn't particularly want the job. There was also an office in Rio de Janeiro, across the street from the University and convenient to the beaches of the Zona Sul. The Rio office was staffed almost exclusively by Brazilians, many with names of prominent political families. It would not have surprised me to visit the Rio office and notice a large degree of absenteeism.
Her attempt is specially futile because she is learninga lot of it from unreliable sources. She never had to research proper sources at school and so she does not understand that aspect of it.
A famous American luthier once commented to me in an e-mail that he thought the end of civilization would come because the search engines return what people think is true, not what is true.
For something like maths or theoretical physics I think a smart person could get pretty advanced. There are so many good university textbooks around that attending lectures is not really necessary. Of course you'd have to be motivated and go through lots of problems.
Some one who has taught themselves the guitar to a professional standard probably has a good idea how to go about learning stuff.
ORIGINAL: Shroomy726 And when it comes to highly complex and technical degrees, college is a must. Like Richard so clearly put it, the study and mastery of science is a very laborious task and would be extremely difficult without lectures and/or exercises.
I had hoped to make the point that Moore demonstrated that teaching entirely by focusing on problems and their solutions, with essentially no lectures at all, and no outside reading whatsoever, could be not only effective, but radically more effective than the customary modes of technical education.
Moore's sequence of problems was masterfully devised to introduce and employ the needed concepts and techniques at the correct rate and time. If he found the class to be above average in ability, he would skip steps in the process, allowing, indeed requiring the students to invent more ideas and technique on their own. If he found the class a bit slower than average, he might include more, easier problems leading to mastering the idea. But it was always left up to the students to prove the theorems and devise the solutions. Sometimes it would end up for a while with a handful of the most able students leading the way, with the others learning from watching.
Moore's method was directed toward teaching the habits of self-reliance and original thinking, and the critical skills needed for self-education.
Many said they began to experiment with adopting Moore's method with considerable mistrust, fearing the students would be unable to prove theorems or solve problems first mastered by famous mathematicians. They would end by saying they were amazed at the variety and originality of their students' work.
For something like maths or theoretical physics I think a smart person could get pretty advanced. There are so many good university textbooks around that attending lectures is not really necessary. Of course you'd have to be motivated and go through lots of problems.
Some one who has taught themselves the guitar to a professional standard probably has a good idea how to go about learning stuff.
This seems fairly plausible to me, though I don't personally know anyone who has given themselves a comprehensive education in advanced mathematics or physics.
But you might say Einstein was self educated. He was so stubbornly self-willed, insisting on figuring things out for himself, that many of his teachers thought he was stupid.
Newton came up with some of his decisive breakthroughs on an extended vacation at home from Cambridge, the university closed down because of an epidemic.
I did know one guy who was remarkable. After I got out of my then-required service in the US Army, I ran a small cafe part time in downtown Austin to pay expenses while I went back to graduate school. The place was open late and attracted a set of interesting characters.
One was a cab driver, a guy getting into middle age. He would come into the cafe in his cab driver's uniform, taking a break and having a cup of coffee. He usually had a copy of one of Schaum's outlines of mathematical subjects, books looked down upon by the math/scence elite. I was a bit amused, considering myself a budding member of the elite. The cab driver wasn't very talkative. This was fortunate, denying me the opportunity to come off as a condescending twit.
Besides, the movie star beautiful 18-year old elevator girl from the hotel next door attracted a lot more of my attention when she came in on her break. What a beauty! And sweet as she could be...
Two or three years later I completed my degree and went to work in Austin's first high tech company. One of the founders was a Moore student. I worked directly for him, serving on the court of last resort for tough technical problems. We got along well, and it was a fine job with a great variety of challenges.
I tackled a problem that turned out to require considerable expertise in the field of numerical analysis--in particular the computer solution of partial differential equations. Everyone else in the company division who tackled it had done it wrong or given up. I had only a distant nodding acquaintance with the subject. It was looking like another lightning fast learning experience when my boss suggested I go talk to Earl C. in the sonar signal processing group. Earl turned out to be the cab driver. Earl knew exactly what to do with the problem that had stumped everyone in the aerospace division, and explained it to me. It was educational. Earl's approach worked beautifully. We wrote a paper together.
I got to be friends with Earl. I learned he had been a jazz drummer in New York City, gigging regularly. The heroin epidemic of the 1950s drove him out of New York after he observed the death of a number of great stars and close friends.
For a few years Earl ran the general store at Study Butte in remote Big Bend Park in deep West Texas, about as far away from New York, jazz and heroin as you could get. Then he decided he missed the city life, and moved to Austin. He drove a cab for a few years. Hearing that the computer field was hot, he looked around the University book store for materials on the subject. Applied mathematics interested him, so he studied it on his own while waiting to be dispatched on cab runs, and after he got off work at 2 AM.
Earl had a chemistry student as a cab fare and got to talking. The chemistry student agreed to sneak in Earl's computer programs for trial runs on the chemistry student's account at the University Computation Center. This was crucial in those pre-PC days.
When Austin's first high tech company started up, Earl applied for a job. Despite his lack of any college tickets, Earl sounded like he knew what he was talking about in interviews. The guys running the company were mavericks enough to take a chance on Earl. He turned out to be a very valuable asset.
Earl didn't have a comprehensive education in math, but he was broad enough, caught on quickly and was very good at what he did.
Someone who has taught themselves flamenco or classical guitar to a professional standard has been not only motivated, intelligent and hard working, but also lucky to have avoided serious injury and fortunate to have avoided--or survived-- long detours practicing technique they eventually decided needed to be seriously revised.
ORIGINAL: Shroomy726 Not long ago, Deniz posted a question about a phase diagram. Why make a random post in a flamenco forum when you can so easily obtain this information online?
Hm actually i had no question at all. I was so annoyed about the prof's high expectations, i mean learning a whole diagram by heart. What was relatively easy is to understand the diagram. But being able to draw it within 5-10 minutes without one mistake is much harder for me. I am very bad at memorizing stuff. So my thread was really more about releasing some frustration than to find information.
Other than that i agree what you wrote, and also with Richard, though i have to say that this method Moore had, is something that is practiced among alot of professors. Normally, here in Germany you have lectures and practicing courses. Often the lectures are mandatory, the practicing courses are obligatory.
ORIGINAL: estebanana The teachers teach you methods, not merely dump tons of data in you. But the problem is what is the cost of that guidance and is it worth it?
I think some do dump tons of data in you, but yeah most are just focusing on giving you the tools to solve your problems in real life. My post above was not about data vs methods though. It was more general in saying even if you know all methods and data, that is still not the most important thing to solve a problem. It is experience and you only gain that by doing it on your own. Thats why i think the idea of educating yourself with YT vids is lacking alot. In college you have concrete projects, you can ask questions, you can exchange with students, you have to learn to work in a team, ... etc etc etc
About guitar playing, i know no good guitarrist who is self taught. Professional does not matter that much to me as skill of playing does btw.
Other than that i agree what you wrote, and also with Richard, though i have to say that this method Moore had, is something that is practiced among alot of professors. Normally, here in Germany you have lectures and practicing courses. Often the lectures are mandatory, the practicing courses are obligatory.
I'm still failing to make myself clear. In Moore's method, the students are absolutely on their own, except for the sequence of axioms, definitions, theorems to prove and problems to solve that were presented by Moore. There is no lecture. None. Zip. Nada. Students may not collaborate. I repeat, the students are absolutely on their own, no lecture, no reading.
Reading is almost unerringly detectable. When students must come up with their own proofs of important theorems and solutions to challenging problems, they are remarkably original. They almost never look like the ones in books.
For a different prof who used Moore's method, I wrote a term paper giving an existence proof for Fredholm integral equations, one of the fundamental mathematical results used in quantum mechanics. The paper was about 12 pages. It took at least six weeks of almost daily struggle to come up with the ideas that led to the proof. In Courant and Hilbert the same work takes about a page and a half.
My prof said the proof was valid, only six students had given a proof in more than 20 years, but he had never seen one remotely like mine. He asked how I came up with it.
In a couple of hour-long sessions in his office, I tried to explain the multi-dimensional geometric analogy that motivated the proof. The professor, a grand-student of Hilbert, a noted research mathematician and a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, just shook his head and said he wasn't sure he followed my intuitive motivation, though the proof itself was clear.
I'm by no means anywhere remotely near the front rank of research mathematicians. My originality was a routine occurrence.
After the course my prof gave me an autographed copy of the two weighty volumes of Courant and Hilbert's "Methods of Mathematical Physics." He said he thought some of Hilbert's students wasted too much time polishing up short and elegant proofs. He was a gentle and kind hearted man.
What was the point? Though my path was far more crooked than Courant and Hilbert's, I learned a hell of a lot wandering in the mathematical wilderness. I stumbled down some very informative paths that happened not to lead to my destination. I had a further six weeks of experience criticizing my ideas, recognizing errors of logic and returning to the fray. And I gained a significant amount of self-confidence through single-handedly winning a battle where few others had succeeded.
It was an experience I shared with hundreds of others throughout the middle half of the twentieth century, a few of whom went on to advance the frontiers of mathematics.
Moore's method was and is utterly radical in putting the students entirely on their own. It is probably impractical for a discipline like physics or chemistry where experimental results and experimental experience are necessary, though I know a few physicists who have used a modified form of Moore's paradigm.
But for mathematics it produced a body of 50 PhDs by Moore, and around 70 by his collaborators. About half of these students, along with Moore himself dominated research in topology and analysis throughout the last 75 years of the 20th century in America and elsewhere...a couple of them my good friends.
Moore was not just a teacher, though he taught two undergraduate courses including freshman calculus, and three graduate courses every year until he retired at age 83. He was a prolific and highly influential research mathematician, strongly active up into his late seventies. He was vice president and president of the American Mathematical Society. He wrote one of the Society's distinguished Colloquium Publications, and revised and brought it up to date in his late seventies. He gave the invited Colloquium Address, a high honor for an American mathematician. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He was also a difficult, demanding and dictatorial personality. I never really became friends with him like I did some of my professors. Mary Ellen Estill Rudin, one of Moore's distinguished students, said she would never send one of her children to Moore for fear he would damage them. But I admired him for his accomplishments, and I'm grateful for the significant role he played in making me a self reliant and persistent solver of scientific, technological and managerial problems.
University was good for me...
..and I am still the only graduate of the University of Texas at Austin to be both a member of Phi Beta Kappa (an academic honorary fraternity dating back to the 18th century) and to have three consecutive semesters on scholastic probation for making only A's and F's. You see, I was distracted....but that's another story.
ORIGINAL: Deniz About guitar playing, i know no good guitarrist who is self taught. Professional does not matter that much to me as skill of playing does btw.
Sabicas always said he was self taught. I never read or heard of anyone contradicting him. He was from Pamplona, which must be the least flamenco city in Spain. He sounded like he must have copped a lot of stuff off Ramon Montoya records, but he claimed to learn the instrument on his own. He got a lot of compas practice accompanying Carmen Amaya, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have hired him as lead guitarist if he wasn't already pretty solid. Later on he composed tons of his own stuff. I thought he was pretty good. So did Paco....
On the classical side, Andres Segovia always claimed to be self taught, except for a few lessons from a wandering flamenco player when he was a little kid. Beyond any doubt he was the most influential classical player of the 20th century, even after you subtract any hype.
it's really quite shocking that in one of the most developed countries in the world the quality of education is so low... And yet they keep cutting the school's budget, ha!
My daughter recently passed her HNC (Higher National Certificate) in Business Administration. I was talking to her about something and she didn't know what "value added" meant. Thought it was something to do with VAT.
Neither did she know what a P45 or P60 were. (documents showing employee's income tax paid to date when leaving a job..and income tax paid for the full financial year) Any kid working in McDonalds even knows that.
Thank your for the interesting notion. I remember the financial dimensions from reports of a serious magazine; but have seen them misquoting / erring too.
Yet, the sniffing departments ( with 60 000 of personel just at Echolon ) certainly make fo a "waterhead" as we name it in German, and a plague on people and state budgets. Especially, for what´s supposed to be a democratic society. -
What I substract from the posts above about didactics, seems to basically confirm that cognition happens uncomparably more with (inter-) active methods than with passive ones.
In fact epidemical mental passivity is what´s driving me crazy since decades, and I only hope that Deniz observation / claim above in sight of German lecture halls and experimental rooms to be true.
My cousin at least finally gave up his professorship in Berlin, not because his active methods were forbidden in a way, but because dependent students weren´t able to make use of it. They were used from school to be spoon fed.
Consequently, Deniz´ observation provided as realistic, something must have basically changed in German schools by now. Within less than 10 years. Hard to imagine for me, but I´m hoping. -
Another cousin told me of a thrilling 2-part documentary on German TV about the brain, broadcasted last week or so.
Apparently confirming once again that there basically is no such thing like free will, but merely the echoing of foregone input. Leaving us as "mechanical" ruminats, who can only hope to have been exposed to as much empirical and unbiased sources as possible.
I suppose the individual precondition to also matter on the responsive moment, respectively whether and when it will occure.
This could also finally answer my old quest of why some individuals curiously seem more minded to congruent spotting than others, yet independently of their social, material or genetic background and even education.
Wisdom floating around all the time, must have hit open reception, which again might have been prepared through impressing source(s).
You know, like say logic, pragmatism, sincerity, recognition, search and what have you, more or less accidentally occuring as idol, instead of the usual football- / movie star ( .... fill in the gaps ) or whatever else that triggers the average vitas up-growing.
Accidents producing a minority that actually wants to know, come what may. Here or in Papa New Guinea, today or 10 000 years ago. -
Together with the old insight of consciousness fragility and proneness to subjectivity: The coincidential coming about of view and attitude make no really euphorising news. ( Who after all likes to figure himself as a nail instead of a hammer.) Yet, realizing and accepting the "mechanical" and profane emerge of perception and impression, seems to be the thorny way to reason.
And in the end of the Odyssey: Could there be coming up free will some day? You tell me.
This might be interesting to you. I haven't read through the whole thread...
Ole! Ole! Bravo! You tell 'em, Ken!
While I lived in Palo Alto, Hewlett and Packard had only fairly recently retired from the company they started. The company was still a hotbed of creativity, one of the epicenters of Silicon Valley. They still had the ceremony on the lawn every month where they fired the cannon and celebrated the people whose research and development projects had been cancelled.
As Sir Ken so aptly points out, these people possessed a key component of creativity. the courage to risk being wrong.
People who talk or write about Paco de Lucia say he is shy, reserved, quiet. He says so himself. When Paco put out new stuff, stuff that pushed past the boundaries, don't you think that at times he must have been thinking, "What if they hate this? Worse yet, what if they just ignore it?" But over and over he took the risk.
My cousin at least finally gave up his professorship in Berlin, not because his active methods were forbidden in a way, but because dependent students weren´t able to make use of it. They were used from school to be spoon fed.
Ruphus
Of the 35 or so people who would enroll in Moore's freshman calculus class, about 10 would drop out after the first semester--at no lasting cost to themselves, I should point out. Everyone got an A, the highest mark, but almost no one could stand being called on every day, and having to admit they couldn't solve the problem.
Of the 25 or so who made it to the end of freshman calculus, perhaps 10 or 12 would enroll in undergraduate analysis. Of these maybe 5 or 6 would go on to graduate courses. This, by the way, was a very high proportion of graduate students, but also a high rate of attrition in undergraduate courses.
When accused of cruelty, Moore would reply that he intended to develop research mathematicians. If people had not the talent or inclination, he was saving them time by helping them to figure it out promptly. His worldwide prestige enabled him to get away with it.
There was a considerable element of intellectual pride and arrogance to Moore's personality. But he was a deeply ethical person. He never criticized or embarrassed a student. He showed tremendous patience in giving people an opportunity to demonstrate what they could do, after months or even years of failure. There are a few famous stories of people who suddenly blossomed after being the dunce for months or years.
But I too believe that the stifling of creativity by schools severely handicapped people who were given the opportunity to be creative, but found they couldn't do it.
I know that every day I was in school from about the age of 11 onward, I felt like I was in jail. Before that I accepted my incarceration as just how life was. I always excelled in all academic subjects. I was lucky to have a very good memory. I could remember their boring rigamarole and regurgitate it to them. But I hated it.
English was easy. Luckily my family spoke the approved dialect. The grammatical rules and dicta they got so excited about were just obvious--to me at least The Mexican kids in San Antonio had to work harder, some of them a lot harder.
Spanish was infuriating because the teachers didn't speak it. By the age of seven I learned not to try to correct them. The Mexican kids in San Antonio third grade cautioned me to keep my mouth shut. The teachers punished me for opening it. I learned my lesson.
Math was boring, although I had to figure some of it out for myself. I kept quiet about this, since independent thinking always led to trouble.
History was boring, a meaningless memorization of lists. No story, no character development, no surprise twists, no search for larger patterns.
Civics was frustrating, because they refused to talk about what was actually going on in politics that was in the news. I heard a wide variety of views from my parents, grandparents, other relatives and their friends. They ranged from my pretty far left, socialist labor union uncle to my unapologetically capitalist grandfather. All this was expressed civilly and usually discussed temperately, but in school any such talk was strictly out of bounds. We talked about legislative procedure, but not its substance....probably a good idea nowadays, given the poisonous political atmosphere in the USA.
Almost the only exception was music classes and band rehearsals, where I was tremendously fortunate in my teachers. They valued the joy of music and encouraged creativity.
One other exception was high school English. My teacher was a retired editor of the Washington Post, one of America's most prestigious newspapers. Tom Flood loved the English language and its literature, and he strove to impart that love to his students. He was an expert coach toward good writing. When you got your paper back with Tom's marks on it, you often said to yourself, "Damn! That's a pretty good idea." He encouraged creativity. English class was a pleasure, not a duty to be endured.
But looking back on it from a long enough perspective that the heat of resentment has mostly cooled, I find that at least 85% of school was consciously or unconsciously directed at the suppression of creativity.
They didn't mean any harm. They were just following orders, just doing their job.
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So did Paco.... 
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