(Un)Learning Fear

Gross hits this idea hard. You simply cannot learn until you remove fear.

Fears are feelings, and feelings are deeply ingrained. The author suggests that we might not even know why we have these feelings, but we must discover the underlying reasons of our fears, or else we'll never be able to learn.

How many of the following fears have you witnessed in your own students:

1. Fear of change

2. Fear of responsibility

3. Fear of forgetting

4. Fear of shame

5. Fear of being ineffective

6. Fear of having too much to learn

These fears are real. Often we hear students say, "I'll be happy just to pass this class." What causes them to "aim low"? One of our primary jobs as teachers, whether we like it or not, is to defuse the fear timebomb. Only then we'll we have what we really want: students ready and eager to learn.