We Can’t Give What We Don’t Have

The Rainbow of Why can be an overwhelming tool.*

All these colored pathways to Valuing math or science or art class — great.

But…where do I start?

Today, let's try this: start with your own love.

In The Prelude, William Wordsworth writes,

What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how.

**

Notice his faith in the power of his own love — his own Value of a thing — and how he expects this power to draw others in through the means of our effortful teaching. Our own love for our subject — our own Value — is the nuclear fission reactor that powers our attempts to teach our students to love (Value) our subjects as we do.

So stoke your own love today. I know, I know — I'm publishing this near the end of a school year. It doesn't matter. Stoke it anyways. It's always a good day for an inner fire.

Why do you teach what you teach?

Why math?

Why science?

Why theatre?

Think on the answer for more than a minute. Talk to someone about the answer. Write out the answer. Draw it out. Speak it out. Mull it over. And over. And over.

Then come up with another one.

Stoking one's love is like tending a fire. If the fire's gone cold, it takes time and work to get it going again. If it's gotten wet, even more time and work.

But the fire's potential is always there. It just takes work to get it going.

Whatever the state of your fire this morning, stoke it. Because we can't give what we don't have.

Best,

DSJR

P.S. Here’s an interesting related idea to “we can’t give what we don’t have” — the Peter Effect.

*The Rainbow of Why is discussed in the Value chapter of The Will to Learn, in which I argue that it is THE most important thinking tool for understanding how human beings come to Value a thing.

**Thank you to David Brooks' The Second Mountain for putting me on to the Wordsworth line. Brooks' book is excellent for teachers who are going through a meaning or purpose crisis.