Augustine's Reflections on Being a Student

As mentioned in yesterday's post, I want to use the next few entries to share with you St. Augustine's thoughts on education, and more specifically, on being a student. Pedro Bardon and Michael Morahan collaborated to bring these quotes to light in their paper, Education: An Augustinian Approach.

The Being a Student section of the paper is divided into 12 parts with each offering a number of quotations reflecting Augustine's thought. My plan is to provide one post for every part, choosing one or more quotations that I would like to share with you.

To start, the authors offer an excellent overview of Augustine's perspective on "being a student":

For Augustine, being a student is a lifelong task for all, not a role restricted to those who attend classes or are enrolled in courses. The fundamental task of the student is to learn about themselves and what they are intended to become. Ultimately, being a student is about discovering those things about oneself, one’s world and the transcendent that are necessary for happiness in both this world and the next. Consequently, if we are looking for what Augustine thinks about being a student, we are also asking what Augustine thinks about being a human person. For him the two are closely allied. He sees the whole world and its peoples as a kind of classroom where we are all fellow students. God, the Truth present within each of us, is the Teacher. What follows are but some of Augustine’s reflections about being a student and thus really about being human.

Tomorrow, we'll begin with Augustine's thoughts on "Restless, Striving, Searching."