Students like learning!

I got to thinking about something while posting on another blog. Students really do like learning - they just don't realize it sometimes. For example, I recently taught the Reformation to my juniors. You wouldn't think that 17-year-old kids would really care much about Martin Luther's problems with the Catholic Church, but it is all in the phrasing as far as I am concerned. One thing I did was put together a 2 slide PowerPoint project comparing Lutheranism and Catholicism today. Here I was modeling the value of compare and contrast. The second slide had the following information on it:

Lutheranism-------characteristic-------Catholicism

no-------belief in purgatory?-------yes
no-------belief in transubstantiation?-------yes
yes-------married clergy OK?-------no

You wouldn't believe the number of questions these three small pieces of information generated! They were really interested in the "why" side. "Why do Catholics believe in transubstantiation? Where does that come from?" "Why can't Catholic priests be married?" Deeper questions as well - "Why can't women be priests?" Now, are my students this interested in everything, NO! But you never know what is going to grab their imaginations!