In a book called The good teacher in life and poetry, Norwegian author and lecturer Inge Eidsvåg writes about his pedagogy teacher, Halvard.
One thing Halvard found important was the concept of begeistring - Norwegian a term that can be loosely translated to enthusiasm.
“To begeistre,” he would say, “comes from the German word begeistern, meaning ‘to give spirit’. To teach means to give a subject spirit. It won’t help to know every single fact about a topic or field if the students can’t sense a nerve behind your knowledge, an engagement.” In English, the word enthusiasm has a similar origin, meaning filled with divine inspiration – given spirit.
Halvard would say that although the word begeistring was misused and worn, these future teachers shouldn’t forget that knowledge must be “carried by love and filtered through a temper” in order to touch others. But this doesn’t entail folly or clownery. Begeistring, or enthusiasm, he would argue, doesn’t stand in contrast to curiosity and nuanced opinions, but rather stands in contrast to lethargy and indifference.
And we have been wondering: does enthusiasm stand in contrast to digitalization?
As teachers of distance learning, this is our biggest challenge. How can we give our subjects ‘spirit’ online? How can we make sure the students sense our nerve and engagement and that we mediate our subject matter with enthusiasm? How do we make sure our knowledge touches deeper than when information is simply fed to the students by textbooks or machines?
These questions and challenges must influence our methods when designing online course material. The only parties in technology-supported education who can carry these dimensions are humans. Therefore, person-to-person contact must play a part when learning is happening online. If not, we are left with knowledge that is despirited rather than spirited – knowledge designed for a computer, not human beings. The computer itself cannot be given spirit, and can therefore not add the necessary temper, engagement or enthusiasm.
In Norsk Nettskole, we run by certain rules to make room for this dimension when we design distance learning courses. Despite technology itself being despirited and cold, we believe that technology should be used to mediate enthusiasm, engagement and temper. This gives us begeistring.