Motivations in Education

  I commented a while back that I had a lot of potential things to share from my time in Gambia. Here I want to summarize some of the key thoughts that various teachers shared, either those on our EDGE Institute team or summit attendees.

  'We need to produce students of whom we can be proud.' A Gambian teacher-sage shared this with the group.  It's a penetrating thought - will I be happy for my students to go about for the rest of their life saying, 'He was our teacher'?  I should be seeking to produce students whom I will have no regrets claiming later in life, particularly in my subject area.  

  'Shepherding the future' as a description of teaching was new for me, although it is not actually new.  I am to seek to guide and strengthen a better future through the time that I have with each student.

  Both of these previous thoughts relate to something which Aristotle apparently recounted, "...Plato says, man needs to be so trained from his youth up as to find pleasure and pain in the right objects. This is what sound education means."

  Maybe the most insightful thought that was brought up was the question of whether we (as teachers, as well as the society at large) are creating Thought-Consumers or Thought-Producers. In other words, do we seek to build or enhance the pool of knowledge around us, or do we simply use the thoughts that others, whether nations or individuals, pass on to us?  How can a society or civilization* that does not produce original thought ever truly grow great? Sure, it can get better, but it will likely tend to be trapped by its own laziness or inability to pursue what it has into new and harder places. Since thinking is hard work, thinking new and original thoughts ought to be a key ingredient for the strengthening of any culture's mind and heart. 


* I am definitely speaking of civilizations, not nations incidentally.