We learn what the right way to do something by seeing it done. When I say “way” I mean “way” in the “general direction” sense. E.g., “How do I get to there from here? Go that way.” I don’t mean “way” in the stricter sense of “the only way” or “the one true way” (methodology).
A good learner can then generalize from seeing this way, and then push that generalization into different areas. For example, we might say that “this is a good example of a game play” in the Glass Bead Game; a student may recognize some elements that make it good (and a teacher can help guide to understand those points), and then the student will be able to mimic for a while, and finally branch out on their own to create good quality plays.
It seems to work like this in writing, in art, in music, in thinking generally there is this creative pattern of seeing something great (and recognizing it as such), imitating it to a degree, and then taking that in a different direction (but still on the Way toward Quality).
But the point is that we learn by seeing examples, doing it ourselves, then receiving correction from those who know.
All of these elements are crucial. I don’t think you can teach anything meaningful if a) you’re missing good examples, b) you’re not given opportunity to try it yourself, c) you don’t receive correction or at least some criticism, from d) someone who can tell the difference themselves.
Our general school “system” is designed around the hope that you’ll get all four of these elements, but tries to compensate when you don’t have d) a good teacher. This of course is futile. No “system” can make up for the missing teacher. A system may mitigate the damage a bad teacher may do, but it will never teach.
The system tries to pick out rules (in an effort to be efficient) from something good. This is done by condensing something good, but the problem is that when you condense something good and look for it’s good elements, you’ve just removed the good from it, and only meaningless rules are left (e.g., “never end a sentence with a preposition”, etc.)
Trying to teach with only rules and no quality examples (with people who understand what they’re teaching) is the major defining characteristic of our upside-down science-ruled world. Science is great, but has no place encroaching in teaching what is good (not moral good, just quality good). The Good is known before reason can detect it. There are things I know are good and I don’t know why (some music, art, writing, etc.), and a good teacher knows this too.