The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act I

I was once - for reasons now so distant and obscure as to be boring - in the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.

I wasn't there in the service of our Royal Elizabeth, but a mere Merchant Navy Cadet: a person whose status aboard ship was below that of the ship's cat and ever so slightly above the rats it was fed to destroy. I was, however, allowed to wear a pretty uniform that meant that women of my mother's age fell in love with me. It being before the age of toy-boys, this was singularly unproductive.

But I digress.

The management fashion of the day was for 'management by objectives' and when it came to training that meant training to the Victorian ideal of a little knowledge goes a long way, or at least far enough, and that, by extension, anything more leads to confusion.

Confusion aboard ship is to be frowned upon.

Now Dartmouth is an Officer Training School and essentially training the trainers. The people they trained would be teaching young boys how to march up and down, how to tie a crown and wall knot, and not to wipe their noses on their sleeves. So, in their very focussed way, they worked on the principal (principle?) that you could teach a poor prospect to be mediocre, and a mediocre one to be good.

All this to say you can't teach a man, boy or woman to be a genius. It comes with their DNA. (They didn't use those words - DNA hadn't been invented then.)

So I ask

I suppose - and I do my supposing whilst listening to Chopin - the literary genius adds depth to his work: like Wilde making his fairy stories equally interesting to those reading as to those being read to.

• So do they do course in 'depth' in Trinity or Magdelen?

• and do drunken river boat pilots teach irony?

..and if not what is the point of education?

Edward de Bono argued with some credence, that education takes our mind down railway tracks and destroys the ability to think creatively.

So what then of all the courses on Creative Writing? Why the books on 'Point of View', and 'Characterisation'?

Pehaps they elevate us to the level of acceptable mediocrity, or just pretend to make silk purses from sow's ears.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727), Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)