We learn more when “we want to” than when “we have to”.

According to ancient inherited concepts, learning should cost (effort and money) and should be completely detached from enjoyment and pleasure. 

Learning does require effort, perseverance and dedication, but we learn more and better when "we want to" than when "we have to".

We learn more efficiently from playing than from academics; more from in what we are interested than in what we are bored; more from what we consider useful than futile.

In their earliest years, children learn while they play, it is a great effort (they establish millions of neural connections per minute) but without suffering. The effort becomes delight from their own personal motivation. That desire to learn by exploring the world, playing and having fun, driven by curiosity and innate creativity with pleasure as an element of motivation. With the passing of the years that motivation disappears and with it the pleasure of learning, leading to feelings of obligation and discouraging the joy of knowing, working, learning and interacting with "the other". With the passage of the years, school activity ceases to be something cheerful, funny and playful. It becomes a rough, difficult, abstract feat required, depersonalized and separated from the aspirations and dreams of each student, resulting in a progressive emotional estrangement.

"We learn only what we like, how we like, from whom we like."

The enormous pressure from parents, families, teachers and society to be good students, disciplined with a single goal that is to pass the courses, turns learning into a duty and no longer a pleasure. To please and to receive approval from the socio-emotional environment is more than a motivation; it is an obligation that generates a lot of pressure.

Our brain does not work under threat or pressure.

The emphasis is constantly on the effort to learn and study, relegating the pleasant occupations into the background, with the promise that it is the only way in the future "to do well and be happy."

We procrastinate the “now” happiness with the promise of the "then” happiness.

The principle "pleasure-love-duty" must go together throughout our lives to achieve meaningful existence and to acquire the ability to realize ourselves. Defer the deepest longings to conform to the educational and social (or economic) requirements, which do not always provide criteria and meaning to life, is a social behaviour pattern that should be changed.

What is learned should not only be significant for the future but also for the present: the "Here" and "Now" is what matters. Our education systems tend to repress the pleasure and enjoyment, condemn gaming and underestimate emotions, giving priority to the intellectual and mental.

Brain rather than heart is wrong.

An education that aims to excellence has to contemplate the human being as a whole; allowing the harmonic expression of the three aspects "pleasure-love-duty" because only together and complemented, they will allow the development of full and happy beings.

Many people work in jobs or professions that do not fill them, in institutions or companies with which they do not share their principles. Then comes the weekend and all that pent-up tension turns into an alienating leisure (bed-TV-food) or lethal addictions like alcohol or worse, drugs. The pleasure and emotional, strongly repressed by duty and the requirement imposed or self-imposed, expressed wildly through euphoric and alienating activities such as exhaust valves.

School organization is a true reflection of this situation. Teaching methods remain the same. New crises and tensions are demanding an urgent need for change in all education systems.

Knowledge is a whole, teaching competences and not contents with more flexible spaces and times, with more integrative approach, more open classrooms without overloading mandatory tasks outside the educational field (homework).

We must ensure that school is no longer a “parking" for children with busy parents, but spaces where children, adolescents and adults want to go to learn, enjoying all together learning (and teaching), sharing and discovering their talents and potentialities.

We must get from "What a nuisance! I have classes tomorrow! to “Wonderful! I have classes tomorrow!”

Non-formal learning is increasingly important. In a knowledge society, the approach to it is a priority in order that is not only a torrent of abstract information, but also an informative-formative wealth for each individual. All intellectual, educational or labour activity should be developed in a context of kindness, enjoyment, contributing to the necessary self-realization of each person.

Schools, colleges, universities and institutes should be spaces for the virtuous and joyful expression of natural pleasure of teaching and learning, ceasing to be mere execution / instruction to become a journey of self-discovery.

Each teacher, each student must feel sheltered, respected, listened to, cared for in their individuality, not forced to teach or to learn, but encouraged to do their best in an emotionally positive and cheerful environment. Less strictness, less discipline and less academic requirements; less evaluation and control mechanisms; to avoid dehumanized confrontation and competition between colleagues and / or students; more freedom and respect for educators and learners.

The challenge is huge but necessary. Through empathy and high motivation, classrooms must become spaces of collective self-realizations full of stimulations for the educators and the students. Helping to form human beings with self-esteem, self-confidence, independent in thought and decisions. Capable of enjoying their studies, their jobs, their families, their lives …