The lucky cat, a traditional Chinese symbol of good fortune. Photo by Juliane Zielonka.

Slowly I began to formulate what I still consider the fundamental fact about learning: anything is easy if you can assimilate it into your collection of models. If you can’t, anything can be painfully difficult. … What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available.

Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas