The author, a programme leader for a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE), hears a complaint from her colleagues that undergraduate students require "spoon-feeding". Accepting structuralism's argument that language does things, not just describe them, the author examines "spoon-feeding" in more depth. Her colleagues who use this metaphor seem unhappy about "spoon-feeding". They say that their students demand it, and feel that they must unwillingly oblige. The metaphor of spoon-feeding doesn't match their idea of what a teacher should do, or how students should be going about their learning. They complain that students just want to be told exactly what to do, the facts, the right answers, instead of thinking things through for themselves. In this article, the author, as a programme leader for PGCLTHE and a mother, compares her experience of encouraging independent feeding with the process of encouraging independent learning in students.