MGTutoring.com. A Rational Perspective on Education.

Someone wrote on the Internet — see a post on the Moomin Light blog and EDUCAUSE’s Edupage of 28 February 1999:

As for Fred Astaire’s dancing, both George Balanchine and Mikhail Baryshnikov called him the greatest, most original dancer of all time. A perfectionist, Astaire was uninterested in the advice of others, and wrote in his autobiography: “I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of creation, you are certain to come up with inaccurate criticism and damaging if you go around asking for opinions. It is the easiest thing in the world to become discouraged by a well-meant suggestions which may throw you off your original train of thought.” The perfectionism paid off. Movie director Rouben Mamoulian said, “Fred Astaire makes it look easy by only taking the greatest of pains. He works harder than any newcomer. He never lets up. You’d think his entire life and future depended on the outcome of each dance. He keeps at the top because he does the impossible — he improves on perfection.”

Read the rest of the post on Moomin Light. Good stuff.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance, and Ginger Rogers sings, in a clip from “Roberta”. I love how, at about the 5 minute mark, they talk and fight through dance and their feet, and I love the little slide they do when they are done fighting and they go back into closed hold.

HT: Henry S

I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

Quote from a poem in “The Elephant’s Child” by Rudyard Kipling.

“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”

Quote from Yahoo! Education, which gives the attribution for this quote as: “William Blake (1757–1827), British poet, painter, engraver. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 7, “Proverbs of Hell,” (c. 1793), repr. In Complete Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (1957).”

I’d add that the same relationship applies between a poor or mediocre teacher and a good teacher — even if the former is not a fool! The wisdom of the latter is well worth the money…

“Man is not weak. … Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.”

Quote from Samuel Johnson.com, which gives the attribution for this quote as “Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac] Note: If you haven’t read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas.”

I’d add that mechanics relies on mathematics...

“Maybe It’s My Fault” by Michael Jordan

“The capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them” is attributed sometimes to Lenin, sometimes to Stalin.

But…in his “On Language” column entitled “Useful Idiots Of the West” (Published: Sunday, April 12, 1987), William Safire says:

Librarian [Grant] Harris [of the Library of Congress] got back to me, however, with a lead to the possible source of both the ”rope” remark and the ”useful idiot” attribution. Former Colgate Prof. Albert Parry writes in The St. Petersburg Times: ”You will not find the rope prophecy in any of the voluminous Lenin works published in the Soviet Union.” Right.

He suggests we look instead in the 1966 book ”People and Portraits: A Tragic Cycle” published in New York by Inter-Language Literary Associates, written by Yuri Annenkov….

Here is what Mr. Annenkov claims he copied from notes in Lenin’s handwriting, italics in the original: ”To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie’s aim. The whole world’s capitalists and their governments…will give us credits…they will toil to prepare their own suicide.”

Look, I know it’s a little farfetched. …However, this gives us one clue about the source of the ”sell us the rope” attribution, and the ”deaf, dumb and blind” phrase may be one of the phrases that helped start the ”useful idiots,” whether or not originally by Lenin.

A version of this article appeared in print on Sunday, April 12, 1987, on section 6 page 8 of the New York edition.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company