Sophomorisms

Tuesday I was walking on campus and came upon a co-ed standing at the top of some steps and reading out loud from some document, much like some campus preachers read Scripture to passers-by. There was a guy with a camera filming her, and another guy who shoved a leaflet in my hand entitled, “What is a Free Thinker?”

Under that was the following:

“free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Free thinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.”

“No one can be a free thinker who demands conformity to a bible [sic], creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”

Reason, Force, and Love

It has been observed in a number of places that there are basically two means of persuading someone to do something they are not initially inclined to do. You can convince them through logic and reason or you can force them with superior strength or power of some sort. The only time you can do the latter is if you indeed have the upper hand in some way. If you are in a weaker position, the former is believed to be the only option available to you, though, you do have the option of using reason even if you are in a stronger position, resorting to force only if reason doesn’t work.

In a magazine letter to the editor, a reader conveyed the above message. In the next issue, another reader responded saying there was a third means of persuasion, love. For example, neither reason nor force explain a father running back into a burning building for his children. Only love does.

As an educator, I am sometimes frustrated in finding ways to motivate my students. Often logic and reason seem to fail before the forces of other classes, jobs, and even laziness or apathy. When that fails, the only other tool I’ve found in my toolkit is their grade, which for an upper division, one credit-hour class, isn’t always a very strong motivating force. But, is there a way to love them into higher performance?

I’m open to ideas.

SDG