Thanks Bonnie. This one will be somewhat hard to remember. In Dutch it is not uncommon to use 'learn' in both cases. There's another word that can confuse us: ride and drive. I'll put 'learn' and 'teach' in the same basket.

>Peter,
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>I hope you don't mind if I correct your English ... you seem to appreciate when someone points out to you that you've used the wrong English word. Everywhere in your post where you used "learn", you should have used "teach" (and for "learned", it should be "taught").
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>Here's the difference. Person A teaches a lesson *to* Person B. Person B learns that lesson *from* Person A.
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>~~Bonnie
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>>>Reminds me of one of my daughters. If someone said that to her, she'd cry. So I played a game with her. I'd insult her and she had to insult back. This strengthened her, so she did not cry anymore. Those who enable continued weakness should do their friends a real favor and help them grow a spine.
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>>I assume you also learned her some other strategies to cope with insults and the like. Afterall, if the sole reaction to getting insulted is to insult back, then this will at times be the start of serious fights, eventually involving groups (e.g. opposing families).
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>>And how about the role of parents and of teachers at school, for example? If their sole role is to learn the child to insult back, then something is really wrong there. It is true that the current practice in schools in the Netherlands is to learn the teased child to be more assertive, but there is also a program to learn the other children to not tease.