Learning and the Soul

As we approach the start of another school year let’s consider some wisdom from our old friend Socrates. 

The power to learn is present in everyone’s soul.

Socrates located learning in the soul. He and his contemporaries viewed the soul as the essence of the human. For the Greeks, the soul included the functions of reason, emotions and “appetites” (desires).   For Socrates, the soul was the engine of learning. This is not a modern idea.  At least in the domain of secular education, the soul is out of bounds.  The brain is the body’s organ responsible for learning.  I am a student of modern education.  I believe in the usefulness of modern theory and practice about teaching and learning. It provides scientific information about how teachers teach and learners learn. Would-be teachers are advised to study it carefully.  I also believe Socrates was correct in indentifying the soul as the agent that powers learning.

We are, regardless of age, in charge of our own learning.  Good teachers draw students’ attention to their lessons. They ignite memory, understanding and action. Good teachers control many aspects of learning, but they do not control the soul of a student. It is difficult to connect with a soul that is fearful or depleted. If the body is hungry or is lacking sleep, learning is impeded. If the mind is distracted or addled by desire, learning is delayed. Learning happens under the conditions of hope, curiosity and a yearning to understand.  Teaching based on authority and technique may have short-term benefits for some, but true teaching reaches deeper and balances reasoning, emotions and appetites.  True teaching empowers the soul to continue learning in the absence of the teacher.

Here is the larger context of Socrates’ statement about learning and the soul:

The power to learn is present in everyone’s soul. The instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. . . Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it appropriately.

Notice the turning from darkness to light metaphor - from blindness to seeing, from ignorance to understanding.  Notice the reference to turning the whole body, which explains why schooling in ancient Greece began with physical training and the arts.  And finally, learning is re-directive.  The soul that believes it is on the right path and has no need for more knowledge is not the learning soul.

Another piece of wisdom from Socrates:

The virtue of reason seems to belong above all to something more divine, which never loses its power but is either useful and beneficial or useless and harmful, depending on the way it is turned.

Socrates refers to our ability to reason as a divine endowment - but with qualification. Our endowed reasoning can become either a beneficial tool or a harmful tool, “depending on the way it is turned”.  Socrates placed the responsibility for directing and nurturing the soul on parents and educators:

Good education and upbringing, when they are preserved, produce good natures, and useful natures, who are in turn well educated and grow up better than their predecessors . . . Those in charge must cling to education and see that it isn’t corrupted without their noticing it.

It is a vital responsibility we have. It leaves me mystified. I have tried to be a good parent. My children have become good adults, but I think I was lucky to have children born with “good natures”. The outcome of my teaching has been mixed.  I’ve helped many children improve their reading and writing. Many of my college students have become good teachers with enduring careers.  But I admit: I have lost many souls. Students have not always been attentive. Their minds have wandered. I have no evidence of their turning.

Think about that. And more frightfully, think about the indirect but harmful results of education: weapons of mass destruction and deceit, clever but greedy souls manipulating laws and economies, obfuscating technologies, industry destroying the natural order, and a soulless culture addicted to entertainment.

If you object to the inclusion of the soul as the agent of learning, then you must find some other comparable concept or mechanism that empowers learners to learn.  And to seek the good in themselve and others.

The quotes are from Plato’s Republic, (1992), translated by G.M.A. Grube, published by Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, Indiana.