Cognitive Affective Connections in Teaching and Learning

I read an intriguing article by Arthur Zajonc today entitled 'Cognitive-Affective Connections in Teaching and Learning: The Relationship Between Love and Knowledge' (Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning, 3(1) (Fall 2006), 1-9.). Arthur's a professor of physics at Amherst College and Academic Program Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

His argument is that the cultivation of love is not only an essential human practice, but that even the mere pursuit of knowledge relies on the affective relations one has with the information in ways we rarely pay attention to. I responded especially well to his discursive style of writing, which was an interesting point for me given his thesis isn't hot off the press for me. I read mountains of these kinds of arguments when I was studying organisational communication at uni and also when I was reading NLP sourcebooks a few years ago. Both times prior, I had no real love for the information I was consuming, and so (at least arguably) that lack affected the willingness of my mind to recall it. This time around, the relationship I garnered with Arthur's words moved me to digest the article and post this. His style spoke to me in ways the others hadn't, and by the sheer passage of time, I'm in a more privileged intellectual and emotional position nowadays to appreciate Arthur's words.

"When the German poet Goethe declared, "In all things we learn only from those we love," he was speaking directly to the profound connection between cognition and affection. We are especially open to and receptive towards one we love. We are more likely to remember the words of a beloved mentor and to ruminate on them long after they were spoken. Teachings go deep when carried into the human being by deep affection; they can change us, teach us even to see the world differently. I have grown increasingly convinced of the importance of the connection between cognition and affection, or to state it more clearly, the crucial relationship between love and knowledge.

First, a personal remark: as a scientist, any attempt to relate knowledge to love feels like an enormous breach of etiquette; it is very bad form, especially so in a public setting such as this. But I have come to conclude that the fear I have felt when broaching this topic was based on particular institutional forms and forces that have ultimately worked against our fundamental human interests. So please join me in setting aside your suspicions and hesitancies and explore with me the possible relationship between knowledge and love especially as they meet in contemplative inquiry.

If I were to ask: What should be at the center of our teaching and our students' learning, how would you respond? Of the many tasks that we as educators take up, what, in your view, is the most important task of all? What is our greatest hope for the young people we teach? In his letters to the young poet Franz Kappus, Rainer Maria Rilke (1954) answered unequivocally:

To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task, this is what [young] people need….For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love, they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. (p. 41)

Need I say it? The curricula offered by our institutions of higher education have largely neglected this central, if profoundly difficult task of learning to love, which is also the task of learning to live in true peace and harmony with others and with nature.

We are well-practiced at educating the mind for critical reasoning, critical writing, and critical speaking, as well as for scientific and quantitative analysis. But is this sufficient? In a world beset with conflicts, internal as well as external, isn't it of equal if not greater importance to balance the sharpening of our intellects with the systematic cultivation of our hearts? Do not the issues of social justice, the environment, and peace education all demand greater attention and a more central place in our universities and colleges?"