When three walk together, one of them can be my teacher: follow the good in those around you, and correct in yourself the faults you see in them.
Analects VII.22. Confucius goes on to say that he will select his companions' good qualities and follow them, and their bad qualities and avoid them. The saying makes anyone a teacher, by example or by warning, and puts the work of learning on the learner.
In practice
- An apprentice learns as much from watching a careless colleague's mistakes as from the master's method.
- A new manager keeps a note of what her worst boss did, and does the opposite.
- Standing
- Compare docendo discimus, which runs the same traffic in the other direction.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- Theories of teaching, and what schools are for