What I love most about passion is that I think, if only for a moment, it allows someone to rise above self-consciousness and operate on an almost super-human level (disregarding the persistent and fragile ego).  You can see it in someone’s eyes, you can hear it in the tone of their voice – they have found something in this world that they value greater than themselves.  I’d say that it has to be one of the ultimate freedoms in this world – finding what you truly love to do.  Of course I’ve thought about defining passion somehow -  you know to sift out the negatives.  For example, I’ve often thought that if I’m going to go around in this world telling everyone to find and pursue their passion I better send out a note of caution that passions should not be something that harms or restricts another person’s freedom or even your own freedom (obvious all of the seven deadly sins would not be passions). 

I know there’s talk of “finding your passion” but can we create passion?  Can we cultivate it in another individual?  For me at least, passion IS contagious but I’m not so sure that every individual who has succumbed to apathy can be revived by another person’s passions. 

I think about students, and it seems that there are some students who are just born with fires lit in their hearts for particularly topics.  Then there are others who aren’t really sure what they want to do with their lives – they enter schools and jobs blindly chasing after money or the so-called “right way to live.”  And there are some students who find nothing of value in school for them, and so they stop and go on to jobs where they can feel useful and feel like they are actually learning.  But can we change learning to light fires for students who have a spark in need of kindling? 

I researched passion for a bit on google, to come across some familiar names and familiar topics, but the most on-target link that I came across was about “Passion-Based Learning”.  I haven’t read all of the links yet, but I thought I would include them in here for my own purposes and for anyone else interested in linking passion and learning. 

Going Bedouin:  Creating Passionate Classrooms (interesting article though not exactly what I started out searching for when I was looking for Passion and Learning)

Passion-Based Learning (a blog entry with references to Will Richardson and Connectivism – I’ve come across them both in the Learning & Technology sphere)

Connectivism Conference (the conference passed but I thought the topics were interesting) 

AND the holy grail of my passion search…..

The almighty PassionBasedLearning.com.  It’s another blog but it’s maintained by a guy who is passionate about spreading passion.  Lot’s of good links to books and other theories/theorists about passion and education. 

And in other news….. completely unrelated/but (un)surprisingly not….. The Philadelphia Inquirer posted an article titled “Colleges See the FUture:  Video Games“.  It doesn’t mention my favorite P word in there (passion) or anything, but I think anytime you make learning fun you open up the doors to light the fires of those students who need an extra push.