This ties in neatly to the post by N. N. Taleb the other day, summed up in the quote, “Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later.” Survival is, in a sense, a crude measure, just like grades: an A or a B (using American grading scheme) “survives,” C might, D and below, no. Understanding the truth is only poorly correlated with it. We can move on to understanding only when survival is not in question. If, in course of teaching, we seek to make “learning,” whatever that really means, a matter simply of survival, we actively detach learning from a search for truth and opens up to tooth-and-nail dirty tricks. If we want to link “learning” to “understanding,” it has to be detached from “survival,” at least in the crudest sense.
PS. I had often wondered if this is the reason why so many great scientists until 19th century came from the ranks of the wealthy and the aristocracy, and to some degree, they still do. Disposable income does free one to think out of box (not necessarily a new notion, the term “liberal arts” does refer to the fact that, in the Middle Ages, the people who undertook knowledge for knowledge’s sake were freed from having to engage in manual labor — the opposite of liberal arts, skills for work and other “practical pursuits,” being labeled “manual arts” for this reason.