Institutio Oratoria

But the chief fault lies with our teachers, in that they love to keep back the pupils they have managed to lay their hands on, partly from the desire to draw their miserable fees for as long as possible, partly out of ostentation, to enhance the difficulty of acquiring the knowledge which they promise to impart, and to some extent owing to their ignorance or carelessness in teaching. The next most serious fault lies in ourselves, who think it better to linger over what we have learned

For example, to restrict my remarks mainly to the study of rhetoric, what is the use of spending so many years, after the fashion now so prevalent (for I will say nothing of those who spend almost their whole lives), in declaiming in the schools and devoting so much labour to the treatment of fictitious themes, when it would be possible with but slight expenditure of time to form some idea of what the true conflicts are in which the orator must engage, and of the laws of speaking which he ought to follow?