"Tafakkaru fi kulli syai' wa la tafakkaru fi ZatI L-lah."

"Antum a'alamu bi umuri d-duniyakum."

 

   One can begin to realize the complexity of the interactions by noting that at least four director systems are involved, two in the learner, and two in the teacher. There is the teachable delta-one director system of the learner, and his own delta-two director system by which learning takes place. Part of the task of the teacher is to collaborate with the learner's delta-two: not to try to replace it, nor to confuse or disrupt it by the wrong kind of intervention. Part of the task of the student is to make use of the help made available by the teacher, and this itself may need to be learnt. The teacher likewise has a delta-one director system whose function is to teach the student, whose operand is delta-one within the student, and whose goal state is a certain state of ability to function of the latter. Also within the teacher is a delta-two system by which, in the present universe of discourse, he learns to teach. We need, moreover, to remind ourselves that what for simplicity we think of as a single director system is usually a complex of director systems behaving as a unity (in the same kind of way as the navigating officer, helmsman, and power steering of a ship function as a unity to direct the course of a ship along a chosen path). So even the four-director-system model just outlined is a considerable simplification. But this, we recall, is one of the features of a model: to reduce the complexity of what goes on enough to make it possible to think about.