Obama's magic

Teaching is the art of helping people learn. A good lecture by a Chinese Physics Nobel Laureate, using only words, inspired me to become a Physics student at HKU and then became a Physics teacher for the better part of my life. That was many years ago.

The current USA president has the same gift and magic to inspire Americans in his speeches. Martin Shovel wrote:

The success of Obama and Favreau’s [Obama's head speechwriter] writing relationship is built on a fundamental principle of good communication: if you want an audience to pay attention, you have to begin by getting them to care about what you’re saying.

To inspire, we use narrative. To reason, we use facts and logic. To learn, we need to care enough to change ourselves.

We teachers can learn a lot from reading and studying great speeches. See my other blog Godlessize for some great speeches godlessized.