#TwistedTropes 16. Cupid's bent arrow

Photo from PxHere

In ancient mythology, Cupid is the 'god of love'. More accurately, he's the god of desire, attraction and lust. Cupid's arrow is always meant to aim true, to capture the 'true love of your heart'. What it's really doing is saying to your head 'Wow, they're really fit. I wonder if I stand a chance?'

So what if the arrow was bent, and didn't fly straight? We'll come back to this.

What is not widely known is that old Cupid liked a bit of variety. He sneakily used two types of arrows. The golden tipped ones, if they hit you, caused you to fall in love. they filled you with uncontrollable desire - or bluntly, lust. His other set of arrows were lead tipped, and if one of those hit you, it created a strong repulsion, a desire to run away from what might otherwise be your object of desire. So Cupid would be considered quite a powerful figure in ancient times, and would probably be blamed for many of the emotions people felt. It was kind of an explanation for what happened in real life, but whatever it was I wish he'd put some clothes on. I'm trying to eat my lunch.

Anyway, teaching can be a bit like cupid's bow. Our influence as educators can be very powerful. We can either use a golden arrow, to turn students on to learning, or we can take the lead alternative, and then they become bored, disengaged, repulsed. Success or failure often depends on the level of passion we invest in our pedagogy and the belief we have in education. It doesn't matter how good your resources are, or whether you have a great classroom environment. If you lack the passion to inspire students, you might as well be shooting at your target with a bent arrow.

Next time: 17. Fermat's penultimate theorem

Previous posts in the #TwistedTropes series
1. Pavlov's drooling dog
2. Chekhov's smoking gun
3. Occam's bloody razor
4. Schrödinger’s undead cat
5. Pandora's closed box
6. Frankenstein's well-meaning monster
7. Thor's lost hammer
8. Noah's character ark
9. Hobson's multiple choice
10. Fibonacci's annoying sequence
11. Sod's unlucky law
12. Dante's lukewarm inferno
13. Plato's empty cave
14. Aladdin's miserly lamp
15. Batman's tangled cape


Cupid's bent arrow by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted by Steve Wheeler from Learning with e's