Motives for teaching

Today, Seth Godin writes:

People take action (mostly) based on one of three emotions:

Fear
Hope
Love

Seth is, as usual, talking about marketing. But he could also be talking about teaching.

Bad teachers motivate students by fear. "Look to the left. Look to the right. One of you will be gone by mid-semester."

Good teachers motivate students by hope. "If you work and study right, you will get a good mark in this class."

The really extraordinary teachers motivate students by love. They inspire students to become passionate about the subject at hand, and the students become self-motivated to learn out of curiosity and pure enjoyment.

Teaching by fear is easy. Teaching by love is damn hard.

Not surprising that so many students have curiosity beaten out of them, when they have primarily been motivated by fear.