Of what value are emotions in the learning process?

The article I'm responding to is "Keep your head". Personally, I believe the value of emotions in the learning process varies depending on a number of different factors. Firstly, I think it varies from person to person. For example, certain people find it easier to acquire knowledge or learn about something if they are passionate about it or if it is of interest to them. This can be seen in schools where some students do better in the subjects they are interested in, in comparison to other subjects. So to these people emotions are of great value in the learning process as emotions help them learn and act as a source of motivation. On the other hand, there are people who can learn just as well without being passionate for what they are learning about. To these people emotions are not as valuable in the learning process.
Another factor which determines the value of emotions in the learning process is what is being learnt. For example, in a subject like physics, emotions are not essential in the learning process and one can acquire knowledge without feeling any emotions. However, with the social sciences subjects it is very helpful if not essential to have an understanding of human emotions and behavior. Therefore emotions are valuable to someone who is trying to learn about social sciences or other things which require an understanding of human emotions. Furthermore, the relationship of the person with what is being learnt also determines the value of emotions in the process of acquiring knowledge. If we are learning about something that is closely related to us and affects us then our emotions can either be helpful or obstructive in the process of learning. The article "Keep your head" illustrates some good examples of this. The article talks about how people in the USA began travelling by road instead of by air after the 9/11 attacks. These people were emotionally affected by the attacks through fear and these emotions prevented them from accurately acquiring knowledge about the probability of dying in a car crash compared to the probability of dying in a plane crash. This resulted in an increased number of deaths due to car crashes.

Does the language you speak affect the way you think about the world?

Before reading Lera Boroditsky's article about how language shapes the way we think, I hadn't given this topic much thought and had dismissed this issue as something we'd be unlikely to find the answer to. However, after reading the article I am convinced that the language we speak does in fact affect the way we think about the world. The article demonstrates examples of how languages affect the way we perceive the world around us. For me the clearest example was our perception of time. As an English speaker, when I talk about time, I give it a direction. For example, yesterday is 'behind' us and tomorrow is 'ahead' of us. Over the years this way of speaking about time has also molded the way I think about time as I now think of time as having a forward and backwards direction. However to someone who speaks a language that does not talk about time in this manner, their perception of time will be much different. For example, the Mandarin language has a vertical metaphor for time and so Mandarin speakers perceive time as having an upwards or downwards direction. Effectively, English speakers and Mandarin speakers have a different perception of time and this difference in perception is due to their languages. Therefore we can conclude that the language we speak does affect the way we think about the world.
Time however, happens to be one of the major aspects of the world around us. But the language we speak can affect our perception of the world down to even the smallest and most insignificant details. An example of this is how some languages assign genders to objects and like Boroditsky's research shows, this assignment of gender can actually affect the way the speakers of that language think about the object. This is what led German speakers and Spanish speakers to use contrasting adjectives to describe an object as small as a key. The German speakers mostly used adjectives with masculine connotations as a key is masculine in German. Whereas Spanish speakers used adjectives with feminine connotations as a key is feminine in Spanish.
So the language we speak not only affects the way we think about the major aspects of our world like time but it can also affect the way we think about small things like household objects.