Hedonism and Education

Kim made a recent blog post in which she posited some ideas about how to make learning more fun in an attempt to create lifetime self-educators. This idea that learning must be made fun to engender some kind of appreciation of it might be misguided. There are times when learning is certainly fun. However, we cannot forget to engender in students an understanding that to learn also involves rigorous hard work and self discipline. This is not to imply that we ought to be scaring children into thinking education is a constant exercise in grueling monotony and work, but that it is an inescapable aspect of good education. You must work at it.

So it would seem that just as important as engendering an appreciation for the fun of learning is engendering an appreciation for the hard work that is involved. There is a pleasure received from completing some difficult task that is inherently different from the kind of simple fun that one might infuse into learning. A good teacher must attempt to show their students this feeling. Otherwise there is a danger of engendering  hedonism in students that will not serve them well in their further academic pursuits.

 It it possible for a teacher to engender this feeling in students, or must it be arrived at internally?