ABSTRACT
You can lead a child to a textbook, but you cannot make him see. None of us is able to see everything in front of the eyes, and much of the time we can see very little at all. In fact there are severe limits to how much anyone can see, or hear, or experience in any way. The brain, marvellous instrument that it is, does not have an infinite capacity for coping with the world. A child makes sense of the world by relating the unfamiliar to the known, but if very little “known” can be brought to bear on a particular occasion, little will be comprehended or perceived. Seeing and hearing are not simple matters of “acuity”; there are limits to comprehension.
