ملكة الرومانـسية
11-29-2007, 01:59 PM
..
To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly
novel. We've got it down
to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell
people that. Doing what
you love is complicated.
The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if
work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults
were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do
what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do
were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But
except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.
And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was tedious because it was
preparation for grownup work.
The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind
of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a
dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the
grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.
Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not
surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals
instead of playing dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids
instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you wanted.
I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made
to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell
them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they
have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later
..منقول..
To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly
novel. We've got it down
to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell
people that. Doing what
you love is complicated.
The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if
work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults
were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do
what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do
were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But
except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.
And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was tedious because it was
preparation for grownup work.
The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind
of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a
dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the
grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.
Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not
surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals
instead of playing dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids
instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you wanted.
I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made
to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell
them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they
have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later
..منقول..