Are you thirsty enough?

Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay

In Seth Godin’s book What to do when it’s your turn (and it’s always your turn) he has a section titled “The Secret of Teaching (and the secret of learning) where he makes a useful point:

“I’ve taught all my life.  And I’ve discovered that there’s only one thing that separates successful students from unsuccessful ones.

The good ones show up and say, “teach me.”

They look at failure and confusion as temporary conditions and say, “that didn’t work, show me another way.”

They are thirsty.

The other students have their arms crossed.  They want to know if it’s on the test.  They are restless.  They need to be sold before they can be taught.
 
And that’s most of what happens in organized education.  If you can’t sell it, people don’t learn it.  When frustration (the twin sister of learning) shows up, most people stop trying.

Not thirsty enough."

Students need to hear messages like this from time to time.  I know it sounds harsh but the days are long gone when just showing up to school and work led to success.  That's not enough.  Learning is an activity and it needs this thirst to drive it.  I'm often amazed by how my students allow me to confuse them without stopping me.  Of course, I don't mean to confuse them but it's clear they are confused.  And, they aren't thirsty enough to say "that didn't work, show me another way."  

What will happen when they graduate from school and are put in situations where they are confused about what to do?  Will they remain just as silent and passive?

I think that often students look around and don't see any other students thirsty enough to learn and so conclude that they are just fine doing nothing.  But, someone, somewhere is thirsty and acting on that.  Someone somewhere is doing what I call thinking like a philosopher: asking more questions, demanding better answers, learning more than they think they need to know.  

In other words, they are thirsty enough.  Are you?