THE VOICE WITHIN

O ne day, towards the end of his childhood, the future King Arthur was having a terrible day. Following the advice of his seniors, he went to see his teacher, Merlyn.
Asking his advice on the matter, Arthur spoke, “Well, what about it?”
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your atomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lutics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — learn.”
“Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never aliete, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”
“Look at what a lot of things there are to learn — pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, tural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theology and geography and history and economics — why you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to defeat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”
“Do you think you have learned anything?” Merlyn inquired.
“I have learned, and been happy,” Arthur said.
“That’s right then,” said Merlyn, “try to remember what you have learned.”
In mentioning this anecdote from TH White’s The Once and Future King, author and educator Michael Connolly brings out vividly how a teacher can influence the lives of students by teaching them to love what they are learning, to cherish it for what it is adding to their lives.
Great teachers are not just masters of their subjects. They have a deep love, an abiding passion for their discipline. And it is this emotiol impact that stays on with the student, long after details of the class lecture have been forgotten.
In the mad race to make students globally competitive, in the obsession with academic rigor, we are in danger of losing sight of the most fundamental element of successful teaching and learning — love. If we really want to ensure that no child is left behind, we must return to the solid foundation.  
And what is that? In his book Teaching Kids to Love Learning, Not Just Endure It, Connolly makes the case for love — with which the teacher makes the subject matter come alive, the emotion which is also the bedrock of teacher-pupil relationship.
Technique in teaching is important; so is the ability to communicate well. But it all boils down to love for learning.
—the harbinger