Teach how to learn and learn to teach

摘要

A chance meeting between two men who, 40 years previously, had been schoolteacher and pupil, led to a conversation about how people are motivated to learn, the ex-pupil taking the view that he had not been encouraged enough to appreciate what he was being taught by the older man. Although he had done well for himself in his chosen career, he told his former Latin master that when he was 16 he had not a clue that the boring "dead" language he was expected to learn was not the waste of time he thought it was, but the key to opening up language skills. If he did not want to be a linguist or spend his holidays in France or Italy, at least it would have made him better at solving crossword puzzles had he been a little more motivated.