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Single Idea 23851

[filed under theme 25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / a. Aims of education ]

Full Idea

Education - whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself - consists in creating motives.

Gist of Idea

Education is essentially motivation

Source

Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing')

Book Ref

Weil,Simone: 'The Need for Roots' [Routledge 2002], p.188

A Reaction

I can't disagree. Intellectual motivation is simply what we find interesting, and there is no formula for that. A teacher can teach a good session, and only 5% of the pupils find it interesting. A bad session could be life-changing for one student.

The 21 ideas from 'The Need for Roots'

23843 Even the poorest should feel collective ownership, and participation in grand display [Weil]
23841 By making money the sole human measure, inequality has become universal [Weil]
23837 Respect is our only obligation, which can only be expressed through deeds, not words [Weil]
23835 People have duties, and only have rights because of the obligations of others to them [Weil]
23836 Obligations only bind individuals, not collectives [Weil]
23839 A lifelong head of society should only be a symbol, not a ruler [Weil]
23842 Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil]
23838 The need for order stands above all others, and is understood via the other needs [Weil]
23840 A citizen should be able to understand the whole of society [Weil]
23848 The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish [Weil]
23850 The soldier-civilian distinction should be abolished; every citizen is committed to a war [Weil]
23849 Religion should quietly suffuse all human life with its light [Weil]
23846 Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil]
23847 Socialism tends to make a proletariat of the whole population [Weil]
23845 The capitalists neglect the people and the nation, and even their own interests [Weil]
23844 The most important human need is to have multiple roots [Weil]
23851 Education is essentially motivation [Weil]
23854 Beauty is the proof of what is good [Weil]
23853 Truth is not a object we love - it is the radiant manifestation of reality [Weil]
23852 To punish people we must ourselves be innocent - but that undermines the desire to punish [Weil]
23855 Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil]