Why "Eat for a Lifetime"?

The title of my blog, as you've probably already guessed, comes from that very wise aphorism that goes...

     Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
     Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.

This summarizes my philosophy of teaching.  I think we in education might be focusing too much on force-feeding students facts rather than giving them the tools they need to learn on their own.

The famous aphorism above, it must be stated, assumes that the man wants to learn how to fish.  But what if he doesn't ?  Before one can even teach him how to fish, the man must want to learn.  In this fishing example, the motivation to learn comes from hunger, which happens automatically and naturally. But is the motivation to learn, especially in a formal environment like school, automatic and natural?  I have a hunch that it is automatic and natural, but that this motivation can be and too often is squelched by the very institution that should be motivating.

So, maybe instead of "Eat for a Lifetime" this blog should be called "Cart Before the Horse" because we  in education don't realize an essential fact:  We are putting learning, the cart, before motivation, the horse.  It would be much smarter, in my opinion, to put motivation before learning.  I would get rid of GPA and replace it with WHPA:  Work Habits Point Average.

So the essential question in education, the Holy Grail, then becomes, 1) how do we hold onto and even improve upon a child's natural curiosity, and 2) how do we motivate a child to learn who doesn't want to learn or is lukewarm on the prospect.  One start to this difficult question:  In my experience, the best way to motivate a child is by showing her success and progress.