Education as Eros

One of my favorite professors, a philosopher of education with antiquated languages tattooed on his forearms, commenced our first lecture together by inscribing, in large chalked letters the ancient Greek word:

Ἔρως,

Eros, he said, means Love. And seduction of the mind, which is education, is erotic. Education as Erotic? Hmmmm...He's taking it a bit far, I thought - but I was deeply engaged, almost to the point of perspiration, and I listened on carefully to his argument. The Greeks believed that knowledge was best derived through bodily interactions with the world; Hence the emphasis on music and gymnastics until a scholar was readily developed in physique.

Music and gymnastics were the subjects taught first in order to establish a strong attraction to knowledge. Activating the body through gym and the mind through music brings the body alive. It is an embodied encounter. The mind body dualism was essential to the foundation of Ancient Greek education; the mind mediates toward the body, and the body mediates toward the mind. Therefore, education begins as an inner dialectic. A dialectic with the body, the embodied and the world. Later, when the mind has developed and is agile and nimble from it's music and bodily training, it is ready for dialectic with the teacher.

What is a dialectic? Historically, it is a shared, mystical experience in which Socrates served as a sort of psychagogic midwife; assisting in the divulgence of new ways of thinking through asking questions, through seduction into 'seeing' what is already there. It is teacher as guide and corruption of the mind, or seduction as learning.

Seduction in Latin is: SE DUCERE - lead towards / EX DUCERE - to lead out of

So, my Professor had written the word EROS and essentially led me towards the understanding that the attraction to learning comes through bodily interactions with the world. We were sitting in a classroom, in neat little chairs beneath fluorescent lighting and breathing controlled air while learning about how embodied knowledge and mind-body dualism can actually make education an erotic experience. I believed him, though not because he was telling me it was so - my body already held the wisdom for knowing it to be true. My deepest moments of learning have always occurred when I have been in direct, embodied contact with the world. Whether traveling, falling ill, through touch or taste, a piece of music or the exchange between a merchant, and especially through communicating with others of all ages and creeds.

Couldn't we transform schools with this little philosophic quip?

By giving students the opportunity to connect with learning, through some deep interface with the world? Wouldn't this inflate a sense of responsibility to their community? This is exactly what Greek Education was all about. The word for education, paideia, actually involves a triad understanding of education, philosophy and the polis or community. Paideia was holistic in approach, and emphasized involvement with ones society. Which, today, is not bound to a metropolis, but to the world. Therefore, schools must deliver some interaction with the world in order to make their students fall in love with it, and to be drawn toward their own illumination.