Wednesdays with Words: “Love is the best teacher.”

I apologize for missing last week’s Wednesdays with Words. I was overwhelmed with words and unprepared to write them out and then it was suddenly Thursday. If you posted a WwW last week, please, please share it as well as todays post!

I have another from my children’s reading. This is from the AOY6 book Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity by Robert Cwiklik. I chose this over the other recommended book because it seemed longer (and I liked the first few pages only slightly better). I’m putting the other one in the Free Reads for the year. From Chapter 2, pages 18-19:

When he was about eight years old, Albert’s mother had Albert start taking violin lessons. She wanted her son to earn how music could make life more beautiful and satisfying. Pauline dreamed of playing Mozart on her piano while Albert bowed his violin in accompaniment.

At first, Albert hated his violin lessons. He never liked being forced to learn anything. He was only good at learning things he wanted to learn. In later life, he would say that “love is the best teacher,” meaning that if you love a thing, you will be eager to learn about it and the work will not seem hard. Even though Albert didn’t love practicing the violin, he loved his mother, so he stayed with his music lessons. It paid off, for Albert eventually became a very good vilolinist. Music, to him,, became something of a beloved friend with whom he stayed in touch all his long life.

There are a lot of things to think about how we educate in those two paragraphs. Whether it’s his mother forcing him to learn something he wasn’t interested in, to the long term results of mother knowing best, to understanding a student’s mind and trying to make things more palatable to them by helping them learn to love it, to a mother’s dream  …

How are you (and I) helping our children love what must be done?

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