What if education, including higher education, is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? What if we began by appreciating how education not only gets into our head but also (and more fundamentally) grabs us by the gut -- what the New Testament refers to as kardia, "the heart"? What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions -- our visions of "the good life" -- and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? And what if this had as much to do with our bodies as with our minds?
What if education wasn't first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?
~from "Introduction,"
Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, by James K. A. Smith, pp 18-19
[cross-posted to
Teaching Redemptively]
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