Original artwork, not a still
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Forster is making a point about education and broadcasting alike: if you hand people everything pre-chewed, all they learn is how to take it from the spoon. It is quoted mostly by teachers and parents who want learners to struggle a little, and the spoon image does the work.
Context reviewed
In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
Wikiquote's E. M. Forster page sources this line to a BBC radio talk the novelist gave for the fifth anniversary of the Third Programme, dated 29 September 1951. The talk is collected in The BBC Talks of E. M. Forster, 1929-1960 (University of Missouri Press), where the quotation is cited at page 412. The Third Programme was a BBC radio network, which is why the talk marked an anniversary. I could not open the book text itself, so the exact context of the sentence within the talk is not confirmed here.
Sources (1)
- Wikiquote: E. M. ForsterQuotations, sourced citation for the spoon-feeding line (see also the Talk page)Reference checked
Context reviewed
