His son has said that among Seamus Heaney's last words were a text to his wife saying: "Noli temere." - Do not be afraid.

Leaving aside the wonderful, and Heaneyesque, combination of an ancient language and a modern device, it reminds us of the poet's enduring love of the classics - from  Greek and Irish to Anglo-Saxon, and of the scholarship which informed his deceptively simple poetry.

'Scholarship', like 'modesty' and 'reticence', is a word which has been somewhat overwhelmed by the 21st century demand for immediate and obvious success, self promotion, and fast and measurable results. I can't remember the last time I heard someone described as having 'a love for learning for its own sake' - which is not to say such folk don't exist, just that it no longer seems something to be reached for or declared.

In an interview, Heaney once referred to poems learned 'by rote' as being 'straws to clutch at', promoting 'a sense of safety', and I expect we can all remember parents or grandparents reciting a poem from their long ago schooldays with a certain amount of relish.

Rote learning - and the methods of ensuring its 'success' - no longer features strongly in our classrooms. Interactive and collaborative teaching styles are a better fit for the learning styles of today's pupils, and the world they inhabit, but we should be careful that we don't throw out the educational baby with the pedagogical bathwater.

Whilst nobody would want a return to the times of chanting times tables, there is, perhaps, a feeling among many of today's pupils that learning should be made 'easy', and that the hard graft necessary, for instance, in learning vocabulary and irregular verbs in languages, is, no pun intended, 'foreign' to many of  them. Heaney himself was strong enough to declare that poems had not necessarily to be 'accessible' and that they were written 'for the poet, not the reader'.

We live in a world where, increasingly, subjects for study are chosen on a pathway towards a career - which may or may not materialize somewhere down the line. Perhaps the harder choice of scholarship, of knowledge for its own sake, to broaden the mind and lend wisdom to decisions, is the most enduring example of the disappearing art of delayed gratification.

The attainment of qualifications and basic skills are, clearly, crucial in the education of our young people, but equally vital is that they be given a hinterland in which to nurture their accomplishments.

We are in danger of producing generations ready for work but not necessarily for life, who have the skills but not the understanding of how to best employ them. Heaney's fellow Irish writer, John McGahern, wrote "Understanding brings joy"; one might add that scholarship aids wisdom and perception.

We should be challenging our pupils to face difficult tasks and take pleasure in hard won achievement. We should be echoing Heaney - for pupils and teachers: Do not be afraid.

As another school session starts, I hope  teachers can operate with a wider focus than exam results and league tables, and that they find the time and energy to encourage their pupils, with a final nod in the direction of Famous Seamus of Bellaghy, to be digging deeper in the fields of scholarship and learning.