Educating the mind

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all (Aristotle).

Dear All,
It is not uncommon to hear some students complaining about the necessity to take courses which are only indirectly related to their area of specialization instead of focusing on their majors or minors.

The quote above by Aristotle underlines the importance of educating not only the mind, but also the heart, in other words, the person as a whole rather than instructing an individual in a narrow area of knowledge. This is probably the real value of classical education which the majority of postsecondary institutions provide – to teach a person a variety of topics, to educate a student to be able to find solutions across different areas of knowledge, and to succeed regardless of the complexity of a given situation, including situations in the field of the person’s specialization which may require knowledge from multiple disciplines.

In my opinion, humanities are therefore, an indelible element of any educational system which strives for excellence. Humanities in turn, rely oftentimes on sciences (for example in conducting quantitative research) and therefore, should not underestimate the importance of sciences for development of humanities.


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