@| | 2c INNOVATION ABSTRACTS ‘8

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‘an CAN Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development

?’ With support from the W.K Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

 

 

 

PASSION AND PEDAGOGY

We were discussing Socrates’ conversation with Glaucon about qualities of a good thinker. Socrates used the
word "passion" frequently—" passion for truth," "passion for the whole of reality," "one whose passions flow
toward knowledge." It struck some of my students as odd that such a term as "passion" should be used in
connection with academic learning. I know it struck them, because as I got more and more excited in talking |
about Socrates’ views—my arms flailing in the air, my voice rising to a sports-fan screech level to make the point |
that one could not really learn without passion—there were a few quizzical smiles; and for this class of 40 |
freshmen studying Plato’s Republic, that amounted to a riot of reaction.

We went on to notice that in the very next passage, Socrates discussed the importance of a good memory. He
said good thinkers have good memories. Knowing Socrates well enough by now, several students were at least
able to suggest that passion and a good memory must somehow be connected in Socrates’ thinking. | agreed. |
To pursue it further, | asked why some of them could remember amazing arrays of complicated sports statistics |
going back several years and could not remember that it was Polemarchus rather than Glaucon who believed ,
that justice is a matter of helping your friends and harming your enemies. It did not take us long to agree that |
it is much easier to remember something one gets worked up about, even easier to understand it, than to
remember something unexciting like who said what about morality and justice. I suggested that it might have
@ something to do with heartbeat, muscle tension, and rate of breathing. Those quizzical smiles quickly vanished.

 

The bell rang, several students woke up, others stretched and yawned, a few maintained a puzzled look; |
gathered my materials, took a deep breath, and accompanied my thumping heart out of there.
i What does it take? It has not been until recently that I have been willing to admit that my commanding voice |
| and marvelous explanations are just not sufficient to rouse students to a fever pitch of passion for the truth. |
| Now I am convinced that it is their passion (not just mine) that is the key. I am convinced that Socrates is
right—passion is often the missing ingredient in their learning and remembering.
If teaching is an art (and let us agree that it is in some respects), I believe we need the imagination of the |
artist as well as the knowledge of the subjects we teach to be able to meet the challenges of a student body
largely without passion for learning and to be able to come up with some new approaches to teaching. For we |
must be able, not only to understand what interests and excites students, but to teach in a manner that does in
fact interest and excite them. You may feel that it is not your job to do this. You spent the time and exerted the
will to learn; your students should do the same. And if they don’t think it’s worth the effort, they should pay
the penalty.
I would agree except for the fact that it is sometimes easy to forget how some of us came by our own sense of |
urgency about the things we studied. For some of us there were teachers "back there" whose passion for !
learning was demonstrable and contagious. They went beyond the academic "slow-game"; they inflamed the
mind, so that for those few crucial moments it danced with excitement. And for us there was no going back. I |
say that some of us experienced that. I include myself. Others, | am sure, had no need of it. They were
"blessed" early—was it a gift of nature, a gift of parents? For some reason they had a passion for knowledge,
and they remembered well. These teachers, no doubt, will find it hard to sympathize with my passive, dull ;
students. So maybe it takes one to know one. |
1 am not willing to write-off the drowsy, yawning, bleary-eyed freshmen in my general education classes.
They sit before me like stumps on logs. They don’t respond to questions. They refuse to read. They cannot
write. I know that many of them will be gone in another semester or two, victims, we say, of a poor public
education. But I do not believe that remediation is the entire answer. I can also criticize them and scold them,
C but that doesn’t work. The threat and pressure of daily quizzes is another approach. I doubt that the effect is |
| lasting. They will not remember well.
= What I want before they go is a shot at their cardiovascular systems and their lungs. I want them for once to
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get passionate about an idea and to see what it does to their minds. I am persuaded by my own early
experiences and by some recent observations that understanding and recall in students can be dramatically |

 

 

Gg j} Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712