Education is like the gym. No one lifts weights because they from the floor because they are trying to move them. They lift weights because they\u2019re strengthening their body to meet challenges they don\u2019t know about yet. Education strengthens the mind for mental challenges we haven\u2019t anticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not a new analogy. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve read it before. I mention it because Dan Rockmore1<\/a><\/sup> has a nice essay in The New Yorker<\/em> making the point again: \u201cShould the classroom be more like the gym?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n The great challenge of teaching is not to transmit information\u2014machines do that cheaply now\u2014but to engineer those moments of genuine understanding reliably enough that students come to crave them. The intellectual equivalent of the body\u2019s feedback is real and, when it arrives, more powerful than any endorphin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n