In the 3rd Century BC, Aristotle is reported to have said, ‘To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men.’
We can only wonder if the philosopher ever faced a class of glum adolescents who felt an out of hours extra curricular English class as primarily an oppression and a burden rather than a joyous pleasure. Is Aristotle's ideal of learning in fact rather questionable? We can only imagine that learning for Aristotle was lounging about in the Greek sunshine surrounded by beautiful temples and olive groves, or strolling in the rolling hills around Athens with other like minded people discussing this and that at their leisure. When your teacher was the great Socrates, perhaps it was easy to have such a pleasant view of learning. However, not all of us had the words of that bearded mastermind to hang on. Was Aristotle ever put in a grey, featureless classroom and told ‘You’ll be thankful you did it later in life’?
It often seems that the natural pleasure in learning is an acquired taste gained at a stage in life after adolescence or even well into adulthood. How many of us can really say we applied ourselves fully at school, or even when more grown up at university? How many of us regret giving up learning a musical instrument while young because we’d rather be playing outside or watching television? Do you regret not taking advantage of your opportunities to learn when you were younger? Don’t have the time now? Aristotle’s statement might seem a touch on the shaky side when presented with this evidence. Perhaps he was having an off day when he came up with this one. Not up to his usual standard.
But it would be interesting to know if people have other ideas on this. Have you ever encountered a class of adolescents beaming with joy at the opportunity to learn? Does it all depend on the context and the quality of the teacher? Or do we even become more closed to learning as we get older? More stuck in our ways and blinkered.
So Aristotle’s little quotation gives us pause for thought on what motivates us to learn. Is learning an innate impulse or do we only do it when coerced, to achieve something specific and beneficial to us or simply because we’ve grown up?
