Fable
The Giant's Apprentice and the Unfinished Library
White Deer Academy had a fixed sum of silver to train answer-writing scholars. The old dean used to like hiring famous teachers—the smarter the teacher, the better. But most of the silver went to tuition, and the teachers were pushed into the examination hall after reading only a few boxes of books.
At first they answered plausibly enough, but showed their weakness when encountering unfamiliar questions. Someone said they should hire a more expensive teacher. But the accountant asked: with the same amount of money, if you hire a more prestigious teacher, there will be less silver left for reading and practicing questions. Is that really worth it?
The new director ran three experiments. The first group invited ten ordinary scholars and gave them many books and many problems; the second group invited two famous scholars but could only afford a small number of books; the third group struck a balance between the number of scholars and the number of pages read. A few months later, the third group performed best.
Mr. Ming is certainly useful, but if one reads too few books, intelligence has no material to work with; no matter how many workbooks pile up, if the teacher's foundation is too thin, it cannot be absorbed. Money is like a short blanket: cover the number of people, and reading is exposed; cover reading, and the number of people is exposed.
The academy later budgeted by first calculating two things: how large a faculty to support, and how many pages and practice hours to allocate. When the budget increased, it no longer expanded only the teachers but also the reading volume in sync; when the budget was limited, it preferred to choose an appropriate scale rather than support a giant that devoured all the book fees.
The director tried hiring two more famous teachers. The scene looked more respectable, but the results did not improve noticeably. The teachers spoke quickly, the students listened little, and the books in the storeroom still had not been read through. Another year he instead bought a room full of books, but could only afford half a teacher, and no one could explain the books thoroughly.
The bookkeeper split the silver into two piles: one to buy the teacher's ability, one to buy enough books and practice time. He ran the numbers repeatedly and found the two sides had to be balanced: too expensive a teacher with too little reading would starve, and too many books with too weak a teacher couldn't be digested either. Under a fixed budget, intelligence and reading volume must be planned together; leaning to one side wastes resources.
The dean called this "the ratio of head to pages." Truly skillful cultivation is not one-sidedly pursuing a bigger teacher or more books, but letting both grow in proportion under a fixed cost.