Love and knowledge?

At first glance you might assume that the words 'love' and 'knowledge' have absolutely nothing to do with each other. True, they come from opposite ends of the spectrum. Love is fueled by passion, while knowledge is fueled by reason. When the two things come together, though, we see explosive results.

In book 3 Socrates talks about the relationship between the student and the teacher. If there is a loving relationship between the two, the education benefits greatly. I personally believe this is why Honors English is so effective. The teachers love us and want us to do well in the class. They don't just give a lecture and leave the classroom. They take time to befriend us, answer any and all questions we may have, and go to whatever lengths necessary to make sure we grasp the concepts. Love is also present in all of the students as well. We all love the pursuit of knowledge, and we love other people who are on the same quest. This is why knowledge permeates the Honors environment, because love is present around every corner.

Socrates also talks about physical and poetic training for the student. If the student has too much physical training, he will become dehumanized and savage. Adversely if the student has too much poetic training he will become soft and weak. Even though we don't focus much on the physical aspect of things in Honors, I believe some of this balance can be seen in our group. If we look at the Honors class as a whole, we have a wide array of students coming from different educational backgrounds. Poets, artists, musicians, scientists, athletes, nurses, theologians and psychologists can all be found in our class. If we were all poets, the discussions would all be very passionate, but easily distracted. If we were all scientists, the discussions wouldn't deviate much outside of the boundaries of the arguments in the text. Since we're all diverse, we can come together to create one ultra-mega-awesome-super-nuclear-student that is well versed in almost every subject. We can explore the 'what ifs' of the text without losing sight of where we're headed, and if we get confronted with a subject that one of us doesn't understand, someone else is bound to.

So, what did we learn this week? You can hyphenate as many words together as you feel necessary and get away with it? Socrates may have really been on to something with this whole love and knowledge thing? Ben really likes kissing up to the Honors Council by talking about how much he loves honors? All good answers. Tune in next week for another exciting episode of "Blogger"! We will now return you to your regularly programmed screening of 'The View'.

P.s. I commented on Lucas' blog "Insertreallylongandunnecessarytitlehere"