Love and Learning

These are some interesting quotes from a book I just started reading: The Intellectual Life: Its Spirits, Conditions, Methods by A.G. Sertillanges, O.P. (hat tip on the book recommendation - Family-Centered Life - though she mentioned it on an e-mail list we both belong to rather than her blog):

Our liking, if correlated to our fundamental tendencies and to our aptitudes, is an excellent judge. If St. Thomas could say that pleasure characterizes functions and may serve to classify men, he must be led to conclude that pleasure can also reveal our vocation. Only we must search down into the depths where liking and the spontaneous impulse are linked up with the gifts of God and His providence. (pg. 5)

Life is a unity: it would be very surprising if we could give fullest play to one of its functions while neglecting the other, or if to live our ideas should not help us to perceive them.

What is the source of this unity of life? Love. "Tell me what you love, I will tell you what you are." Love is the beginning of everything in us; and that starting point which is common knowledge and practice cannot fail to make the right paths of both in a certain measure interdependent.

Truth visits those who love her, who surrender to her, and this love cannot be without virtue. (pg. 19)

So you may have noticed that I've been exploring some of the multi-faceted aspects of education. I'm trying to get a better sense of what is essential in education. One of these that I think is often neglected is the very important concept of helping our children learn to love what is good and to desire the truth.