It’s Not Boring!

You Are Boring!

If you’ve ever spent time teaching anything to a child then you have probably, at some point, rudely been told “This is boring!” After about a decade of teaching in schools I have heard this…well, let’s just say, more than once. Often enough I have heard this frustrating little phrase uttered while the class is in the middle of studying something which I have always found unwaveringly fascinating.

Now, in all fairness, it is possible to present almost anything in a boring fashion. We have all known people with the capacity to drain the life and joy out of everything they touch, haven’t we? Such being the case, it is worth doing some self evaluation if you are hearing the refrain “this is boring” a bit too often in your classroom. If you realize that you are being joyless, lifeless, and passionless about what you are teaching then please repent of that. If you are unwilling to repent of that then at least have the decency to quit being a teacher (I hear the IRS and DMV are hiring). But if you are not one of those zombie teachers (the kind who just collects paychecks even though the soul of your teaching left the body standing in front of the whiteboard about a decade ago) then maybe it’s not you. It might be that the child who is saying “this is boring” doesn’t know how to be interested.

In that case it is our job to awaken the life of their mind. As Lewis said, we must “irrigate deserts.”

I am not perfect, I am not pretending to be anything of the sort, I certainly have my off days, but I love teaching. I love what I teach and I love those whom I teach. Feel free to ask my students, and they will tell you, I am usually genuinely and obnoxiously excited about whatever we are reading or studying at any given moment. “We are reading Plato next! I LOVE PLATO!” “Herodotus is hilarious, don’t you guys see how funny that was?!” “Syllogisms are the BEST! If you disagree then prove me wrong with an argument!” “Sir Gawain is at war within himself! What do you think will win in the end, his knightly chivalry or his Christian piety?” “BEOWULF! Did you know this whole story is about Jesus even though his name is never mentioned once!?” “Who can write the best Disputation on the topic ‘Arthur was a just ruler’?” “Pilate asked, ‘Quid est veritas?’ while staring truth in the face!” “Let’s write three versions of a speech against the practice of Abortion but in each successive turn let’s place the major emphasis on a different mode of persuasion! Logos, Ethos, Pathos!” “What do you find more compelling towards faith, logical arguments for God such as those in Mere Christianity or imaginative apologetics like Narnia or The Ransom Trilogy?” On and on, I never get tired of discussing this stuff. Who could? Lots of people…but that’s on them.

A pretty settled conviction of mine at this point is that being bored is always the fault of the one who is bored. You can actually choose whether or not you will be bored or interested.

A Maxim: Interested is interesting.

Pick a topic, any topic, get interested.

This is a rock:

I wonder what kind of rock this is? How many different kinds of rocks are there? What is it made of? What colors do I see in this rock? What gives the rock those colors? I wonder how old this rock is? How does one determine that? What does it even mean to ask how old a rock is? Is that different than to ask how old is the earth? How is a rock made? Are all rocks made the same way? Does it make sense to speak of rocks being made or does that imply the intent of an intelligent designer? Surely all the rocks in my yard aren’t directly made by intelligence but by natural processes? God made natural processes, so then each rock is made by God, right? What is the difference between a rock and a stone? Is it the texture or the material or both? Is there a size at which a rock isn’t a rock but something else? Is a mountain a rock? Is the moon a rock? Is the whole earth a rock? Why are some rocks more valuable than others? Are diamonds rocks? How much does it weigh? Why does another rock of the same size have a different weight than this rock? What if this rock isn’t from earth? How could I determine where this rock comes from? Is it possible to analyze any given rock and determine its original location? If I drop this rock at the same time I drop another object of the same weight will it drop to the ground at the same rate of speed? What if I drop it at the same time as something that weighs more, will it fall at the same rate? Is there a platonic form known as rockness? How would Plato and Aristotle agree or disagree about that?

Those are just a few questions that come to my mind (off the cuff) that I could ask which are inspired by… this rock.

I find myself completely able to be interested in any of the questions I just asked about a random picture of a rock I pulled off of Google. How much easier should it be to be interested in a historical text, a piece of fictional literature, a painting, a musical score, a sculpture, a work of architecture, or even another person? If I decide to take an interest I can be interested. About the time I get interested, that’s when something magical happens… I cease to be bored.

We have to teach our students to wonder! The inability to find something interesting, or to find a way to take interest, is usually a sign of a mind that is used to being passively entertained. We must wake up the life of the mind! If we succeed then our students will never have an excuse for being “bored” ever again.

Let’s play with my thesis a bit, namely, that we can take an interest in anything. I will give you something much more fun than a rock (because I am a nice guy). Here is a painting. I could tell you a lot about this painting because it is one of my all time favorites. For now, I will tell you absolutely nothing. Just look at it for a while.

Now, start asking questions. What can we take an interest in? How many questions can you come up with? Nothing is off limits to ask. Go. (Leave your questions in the comments and let’s see how many you come up with.)

I’ll bet if you commit to this exercise you’ll surprise yourself how many roads you can go down via your inquiries. Try this with your children at home or your students at school (or just on your own). Pick any random object. Start with a “boring” thing and see how many questions they can come up with. Do the exercise with them and get them interested in the “mundane” object you have chosen. Then take them to something more immediately interesting and press them to ask as many questions as possible again. In the end, remind them that there is absolutely nothing which we cannot take an interest in if we choose to be interesting people. Being bored is always a choice and only boring people choose to be bored.