{"id":1019,"date":"2020-03-21T10:43:31","date_gmt":"2020-03-21T15:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2023-11-24T15:00:29","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T21:00:29","slug":"the-flow-of-thought-part-9-the-lifelong-love-of-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2020\/03\/21\/the-flow-of-thought-part-9-the-lifelong-love-of-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flow of Thought, Part 9: The Lifelong Love of Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The \u2018love of learning\u2019 is one of those phrases that is so overused in education that it feels like it has been beaten to death with a stick. Every educator and every educational model claims to promote the \u2018lifelong love of learning\u2019 for their students. I challenge you to find an engaged teacher who doesn\u2019t endorse this goal. Side note: There are still unengaged teachers, who are only in it for the job or who will openly claim that they don\u2019t care about their students. I had a few of those in public high school. But that\u2019s another story\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to say I hesitated before using such a clich\u00e9 myself in the title of this closing post in the Flow of Thought series, because I know very well how meaningless clich\u00e9s can become. If everyone says they support the \u201clove of learning,\u201d then what does it even mean if it doesn\u2019t change how we do school or run our classes? Now I do want to pause to indicate that, as far as I can read the education landscape, there has been a growing recognition in several quarters about the importance of inspiring a love of learning in students. More educators now than fifty years ago fear the deadening effect that incompetent and uninspiring teaching can have on students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Download the on-demand webinar<\/a>!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Previous articles in this series, The Flow of Thought<\/em>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness\u2019 Sake<\/a>; Part 2: The Joy of Memory<\/a>; Part 3: Narration as Flow<\/a>; Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games<\/a>; Part 5: The Play of Words<\/a>; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians<\/a>; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom<\/a>; Part 8: Restoring the School of Philosophers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At general education conferences I have attended educators are discussing more and more how grades and a focus on grades as a measure of achievement can suck the joy and life out of learning. It is not so bad outside the classical education and Charlotte Mason world, in this respect, as it once was, even if many teachers\u2019 practices have not yet caught up with their values. Or perhaps we could say that, while many educators value the lifelong love of learning as a goal, they are currently trying to get their students there through entertainment, gimmicks and classroom management manipulations<\/a>, rather than through the flow<\/a> of thought. But we\u2019ll give them the benefit of the doubt that their efforts are sincerely meant, even if ultimately ineffective.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, I would conclude that part at least of the reason for the cliched nature of the phrase the \u2018love of learning\u2019 is a real recognition of this noble goal on the part of educators. But the other reason I feel entitled to use this clich\u00e9 in my title is the force of the argument we\u2019ve made thus far in The Flow of Thought <\/a>series. Our thesis has been, following the famed positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, that learning can be enjoyable. If pursued in a way such that the challenges meet our current abilities, learning in any domain of the classical liberal arts and sciences can issue in the flow of thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pleasure vs. Enjoyment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As you\u2019ll remember, flow<\/a> is that timeless state of focus and concentration that people around the world describe as exhilarating, meaningful and joyful. From rock climbers to scientists, mathematicians to novelists, whether as a hobby or one\u2019s main work, getting into flow promotes something beyond mere pleasure that our psychologist terms \u201cenjoyment\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cEnjoyable events occur when a person has not only met some prior expectation or satisfied a need or a desire but also gone beyond what he or she has been programmed to do and achieved something unexpected, perhaps something even unimagined before\u2026. Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment. Playing a close game of tennis that stretches one\u2019s ability is enjoyable, as is reading a book that reveals things in a new light, as is having a conversation that leads us to express ideas we didn\u2019t know we had\u2026. After an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, that our self has grown: in some respect, we have become more complex as a result of it.\u201d (46)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s this sense of enjoyment that resonates with the love of learning, properly understood. It\u2019s not the titillating pleasure of some entertaining tidbit that leaves you as ignorant as you were before. It\u2019s the transformation of the self, the enlargement of the soul, through an encounter with reality, through a grappling with the forms of existence. Incidentally, this distinction mirrors Augustine’s distinction between to enjoy and to use (Latin fruor<\/em> and utor<\/em>), though Augustine reserves proper enjoyment for love of God alone. There is something about enjoyment, in this sense, that is transcendent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the reasons I love Dr. Jordan Peterson<\/a>\u2019s lectures and his book Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos<\/a><\/em> is his ability to express the deep paradox of pain and meaningful transcendence one feels in this sort of grapping with reality. The love of learning is not watching some namby pamby cartoon with its prepackaged tasty morsels of information. It\u2019s the exhilaration felt after facing your fears and wrestling that monster in the dark, or slaying the dragon of chaos just beyond the order of your understanding. It\u2019s struggle and suffering in the pursuit of a meaningful goal. Learning, like life, is not all roses and cupcakes, even or especially when you love it. But in spite of the pain of progressing in the flow of thought<\/a>, it\u2019s still so enjoyable that we\u2019re even willing to do it as a hobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amateurs and Dilettantes <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve already discussed the idea of becoming an amateur\nscientist or historian. Our psychologist has suggested these avenues as methods\nto create order in consciousness in the average adult\u2019s leisure time. Since TV\ncorrelates with mild depression (119), we need something more challenging to\ngrapple with to experience enjoyment. Learning in any domain presents this optimal\nchallenge for leisure, hence the lifelong<\/em> love of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Csikszentmihalyi closes out his chapter on the flow of thought with reflections on how the modern world has lost this notion of the amateur because of what Josef Pieper has called a culture of \u201ctotal work\u201d (Leisure: The Basis of Culture<\/a><\/em>, 25). Our psychologist discusses the words \u2018amateur\u2019 and \u2018dilettante\u201d in detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere are two words whose meanings reflect our somewhat warped attitudes toward levels of commitment to physical or mental activities. These are the terms amateur<\/em> and dilettante<\/em>. Nowadays these labels are slightly derogatory. An amateur or dilettante is someone not quite up to par, a person not to be taken very seriously, one whose performance falls sort of professional standards.\u201d (140)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This was not always so. The first is derived from the Latin\nverb amare<\/em>, meaning \u201cto love,\u201d and referred to a person who engaged in\nan activity for the love of it, rather than professionally, for mere profit or\nmaterial advantage. The second comes from the Latin delectare<\/em>, \u201cto\ndelight,\u201d and referred to a person who could spend his time doing whatever\ndelighted him the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We too often forget this, but the sneer used to go the other\nway around. The upper class nobles and later on in Britain, at least, the upper\nmiddle class, looked down upon the professions and the act of receiving payment\nas being beneath them. This resonates with the classical contrast between the artes\nliberals<\/em> and the artes serviles<\/em>, those arts which a free man could\nengage in, not for profit but because he had the leisure that afforded him the\nopportunity to engage in the higher pursuits that would produce enjoyment\n(ideally, though this often devolved in the mere pursuit of pleasure), as\nopposed to the need to work for a living. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"noble's<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The irony is that we live in an era in which the noble\u2019s leisure time is accessible to more people than ever before in the history of the world. Yet \u201ctotal work\u201d has taken over too many people\u2019s lives, at the same time as passive entertainment predominates. In a lecture I attended last year, Andy Crouch, the author of Culture Making<\/a><\/em>, expressed this cultural development as a movement from a rhythm of work and rest, to toil and boredom. And the skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety bear witness to the disorder in consciousness that results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have become too accomplishment focused and lost sight of\nthe joy of experiences, according to our psychologist. And this fact is on\ndisplay in the negative slippage in these words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe earliest meanings of these words therefore drew attention to experiences rather than accomplishments; they described the subjective rewards individuals gained from doing things, instead of focusing on how well they were achieving. Nothing illustrates as clearly our changing attitudes toward the value of experience as the fate of these two words.\u201d (140)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Of course, we should note that there are benefits to our focus\non achievement and work. The Puritan work ethic is certainly to be preferred to\nthe privileged ennui<\/em> of a class of nobles. But in a way that is\nprecisely part of the problem I am describing. Without the love of learning we\nmoderns are all at the same time oppressed proletariats and bored, yet privileged\nnobles, decrying the 1% that we are ironically a part of, if we only took a\nglobal and historical perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution seems to be recovering the flow of thought<\/a> in our leisure time as a lifelong pursuit, with the intrinsic goals of enjoyment on the one hand and personal transformation on the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aside:<\/em> Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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