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energy that propels it must come from those who are learning”
(36). All of the advice that he does offer to teachers, those
“steerers” of the “boat” that is education, is channeled through
his definition of what it means to be a “teacher.” Writing of
“curiosity” – the “open mind” to which “nature and social
experience are full of varied and subtle challenges to look
further” (33) – he furthers this definition:
With respect then to curiosity, the teacher has
usually more to learn than to teach. Rarely can he
aspire to the office of kindling or even increasing
it. His task is rather to keep alive the sacred
spark of wonder and to fan the flame that already
glows. His problem is to protect the spirit of
inquiry, to keep it from becoming blasé from
overexcitement, wooden from routine, fossilized
through dogmatic instruction, or dissipated by random
exercise upon trivial things. (33-4)
For Dewey, that “sacred spark of wonder” is not something that
some students have but others simply … don’t. No. For Dewey,
all students have that “spark” of curiosity, but it is their
“spark”: it is individual to them. Because of that, that
already present curiosity within all students cannot be stoked
in the same way. Simply put, all students cannot be “steered”
in the same way. Needless to say, this renders the stimulating
of motivation is a very complicated undertaking. If a teacher
is not to bestow upon his students “bricks” of an “alreadywritten,
already-known” knowledge that is the derivative of a
perspective of reality and “truth” ordained by “fixed traditions
and semi-sacred dogmas” – “absolute and unshakeable” – then how
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