Bron: Psyche.co
Why good teachers allow a childs mind to wander and wonder
Sam Dresser
1 juli 2020
A fifth-grade science class on a winter morning: the Sun is low, as is the teacher’s voice, and you’re just beginning to warm up. The teacher dances around a chart of the solar system, pointing now at this brightly coloured disc, now at that one. Yellow light begins to seep in through the windows – the Sun has finally climbed high enough to reach your classroom. As the morning class proceeds, so does the Sun. Its rays touch you. The downy hairs on your arm become a fur of light. You notice you are warming up on one side; the contrast sends a shiver down your spine. And then it hits you, like a revelation: the Sun is a sun. It is not simply ‘the Sun’, that taken-for-granted presence (or absence, on a grey day), but a sun, one of trillions of such objects in the Universe. And somehow, this burning ball of gas, millions of miles away, is pleasantly warming your skin as you circle it on ‘your’ planet. You are filled with a wonder that bathes everything in its glow, even those concerns of the classroom that the Sun could never reach. In a moment – the effects of which perhaps will last forever – your whole view of the world and yourself is transformed. A connection is made.
