A Buddhist story:  A person sees an ant in a rain barrel., “What are you doing in my rain barrel?” he screams.  “Yuk! You’re ruining the water.  Get out!”  Another person comes by, sees the ant, and says, “It’s a hot day, even for ants. You aren’t hurting anything. Go ahead, stay there.”  The third person comes by, sees the ant in the rain barrel, rushes inside the house, and comes out with a handful of sugar to feed it. The first person is arrogant and selfish, the second is tolerant, the third is respectful and loving.

I’ll get straight to the point.  My rule of thumb is simple:  people first, the other stuff like information and technology and pedagogy second, third, fourth, and….  My first principle of teaching, then, as I told someone decades ago, and as I titled the third volume of collected Random Thought, is love, unconditional love.  For some reason so many academics are so afraid of saying it that they can’t say, that word:  love.  Or, they sugar coat it with words like “compassion,” “caring” or “positivity” or “warmth” or “concern” or “resonance” or “community” or “relationship.”  But, when you look under the hood, the engine is powered by love.  Education is not merely the recitation or transmission of information; it’s not only the use of some new-fangled technology; it’s not just method.  It’s not just jamming stuff down students’ throats and asking them to regurgitate it.  Education is about teaching life.  It’s about learning to be wise; that is, learning how to apply the information in a virtuous way.  We’re forgetting that we’re all human beings.  Education, is about becoming good human beings, about learning to live the good life, not just figuring how to make a good living; it’s about learning that living and loving are distinguished only by a vowel.

Love is education’s shibboleth. Why do so many academic pooh-ha love?  Why do they poor-mouth is as hippy-ish, new-agey, soft, airy, touchy-feely.  Is it because they can’t say the word? Academia’s general flippant and suspicious attitudes toward displays of emotion has created too many detached, apathetic, and even cruel “not giving a damn” academics.  I’ve never heard a keynote or plenary speaker talk of it at any of the many conferences on teaching I’ve attended.  You know, I used to ask myself  “Why aren’t the student’s better prepared?”  Such a lamentation was such a waste of my precious time.  Then, as part of my epiphany, I began to ask “How can I help them to make themselves better?”  To that there was and is only one answer:  love, unconditionally love.  When I said that to myself, that’s when I really began role up my sleeves.

Do you know your Carl Jung?  He said,  “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”     For students to grow and develop, for them to change and transform, for them to leave our campus as better persons than when they arrived, they must learn the need to care, respect, and love with whom they live, work, meet.  Love conveys the value of listening to the needs of students.  It impacts gestures, body language, facial expressions, and actions.  It includes.  It broadens awareness and otherness; it stirs aliveness; it heightens mindfulness. It allows you to seek to know and understand the wide variety of people in that classroom, and accept them.  You attend more closely and with greater sensitivity.  It sharpens your focus.  You seek to know and understand their individual stories, unique perspectives.  You seek to know their needs in order to connect with them.  Love and you change your heart and mind.  .

Love is education’s shibboleth.   It will reveal if you’re an educational Ephraimite.  Say it so you can cross the river!  Mean it!  Live it.  Keep it alive.  Fuel it to burn fiercely.  Everyday!  Don’t define or analyze it.  It’s an adjective, adverb, verb, and noun for education.  It’s not a weakness; it’s a strength.  Make it the answer to everything because, if for no other reason, it is.  It’s what I call a “little big word.”  It’s the cornerstone of belief, faith, and hope.  Without it, there’s no “tenderness,” “compassion,” “empathy,” “caring,” “positivity,” “resonance,” “warmth,” “concern,” “community,” or “connection.”  Without it, there’s only despair, brooding, tears, apathy, stagnation, resignation, anger, unhappiness.”  Love can only create; it can only nurture; it can never weed out; it can never destroy.  So, just love to love.  Unconditionally!   If you do, if you get there, I guarantee you’ll feel inspired, energized, fulfilled, and at peace as you never felt before.  Trust me, I know.  If you’re willing to work at loving, if you’re willing to work at it without demanding guarantees, love will work.

Don’t put it off.  Don’t wait for tomorrow.  The time to do it is now.  The time to love is now.  You can transform the classroom by the way you see it; you can change obstacles into opportunities, slothiness into incentive, aloneness into community, into meaning, anxiety into enthusiasm, indifference into making a difference, hesitation into persistence, blindness into insight, resignation into determination, sadness into joy, emptiness into fulfillment, vulnerability into strength.   Tell me, what and when are the things you do that make you feel most fully alive aren’t based on love?   Love makes each moment in the classroom precious, each student sacred.  You’ll find yourself “creating” and nurturing good students rather than counting them; you’ll persuade, influence and inspire rather impose and command; you’ll lead people rather than merely organize the presentation and testing of material; and, you’ll center on people rather than on information, process, and technology.

I’m thinking of Mary and Alice, and others before them over the years, and I know that love is education’s shibboleth.

Louis