Education is a Life, part 2

I'm on vacation, and as such, I have put aside what I was reading and have picked up a fantastic bit of fiction, which I don't normally do.  I have been reading T.H. White's The Once and Future King.  As I was reading about Merlyn teaching the young Arthur, or the Wart as he is referred to in the first part of the book, I came upon this nugget.

Merlyn is about to give the Wart his first real lesson.  The boy is dreading the work of "lessons, and he off-handedly states that he wishes he were fish as they pass the moat.  Merlyn asks him what kind of fish.  When the boy responds that he'd prefer to be a perch, Merlyn turns him into one.

"'Oh, Merlyn,' he cried, 'please come too.'

'For this once,' said a large and solemn tench beside his ear.  'I will come.  But in future, you will have to go by yourself.  Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.'"

Do with that as you will.