Influential Teachers and the Evolution of 'Love of Learning'

Exploring how passionate teachers shape students' love for learning, with personal anecdotes and reflections on the evolving meaning of 'love of learning' in education.

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Episode notes

About our Guest

Joshua Gibbs is a teacher, a lecturer on pedagogy and great books, and the author of several books that are listed in the show notes. For the last twelve years, Gibbs has taught classic literature in Christian schools and earned acclaim for his writing. He has been a frequent speaker at several excellent classical conferences and published for many respectable classical education resources. His work can be explored on his website https://www.gibbsclassical.com/

We also encourage you to register for his 2022 Summer Conference.

Show Notes

Josh discusses how to engage students with voices from the past and how to shape their affections through delighting in common things. He asks, "How do we teach a book so that a student wants to read it again?" As a teacher, it is our duty to step out of the way and let the author speak and pass on our delight in hearing voices from the past. This is how we help students fall in love with books. We want to instill a love for the right things. We need to capture the hearts of students so that they care.

Some practical questions in this episode include:

What are the goals of a classical teacher vs. a non-classical teacher?
What types of goals ought we set and how do we go about teaching in a way that matches our goals?
How do we teach a book so that students will want to read it again?
How do we develop a taste for good things?

These questions help us to wrestle with the idea that all education ought to be first and primarily about ordering our souls with love as the primary goal. If we set education goals too lofty or create goals that are too shallow, what are we telling our children? The goal of education is to help students care. Josh ascertains how a teacher can help students care about what they are learning.

Books Mentioned In This Episode

Something They Will Not Forget by Joshua Gibbs

How to be Unlucky by Joshua Gibbs

Love What Lasts by Joshua Gibbs

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Demien by Hermann Hesse

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Iliad by Homer

Paradise Lost by Milton

The Divine Comedy by Dante