The idea behind positive psychology is contained in the adjective “positive.” It’s not about trying to be positive or optimistic. Positive psychology is an intentional departure from a focus almost solely on diagnosing and treating psychological pathologies. This shift saw research begin to investigate concepts like wellbeing, excellence and human flourishing. Instead of viewing every human as containing a set of psychological pathologies, there emerged a view that a human could be coached and counseled towards a better version of themselves.

In this article, we will consider the history and key figures of positive psychology and relate this work to some practical practices we can use in our classrooms. In many ways, positive psychology promotes many of the ideals of classical education and some of the tenets of a biblical worldview. Yet, there may be ways in which we should critically examine this work to capture what is most valuable, while clearly defining points of tension with a Christian perspective.

History of Positive Psychology

We can actually trace the main concepts of positive psychology back to the work of ancient philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle. These philosophers sought to articulate what it means to live a good life, which is aimed at achieving happiness or eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία). In the Phaedrus, Plato shares the story of a charioteer driving two winged horses each having an opposite character. The charioteer must train the noble horse so that the horse full of vices cannot lead the chariot astray. Similarly, Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics lays out the pathway to eudaimonia via the acquisition of virtues which are acquired through the practice of habits. These virtues or excellences (aretai) leading to a life marked by happiness or joy is what modern positive psychology seeks to promote.

Maslow’s Hierarchy

Abraham Maslow, famous for the hierarchy of needs, set a course towards health in his groundbreaking work Toward a Psychology of Being (1968). In this he notes that psychology had up to that point been inclined to treat “sickness.” In the Freudian framework, the individual and the therapist ask the question, “How do I get unsick?” But what if the interior person can be aimed towards higher values and principles? Can a person be pointed towards a new question, “How do I get healthy?” Maslow famously quipped, “It is as if Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half” (Toward a Psychology of Being 5). Aiming towards health is a worthy aim and a good corrective to the dominant model of psychology of his time.

What Maslow developed was a theory that aimed to explain human motivations towards peak experiences. Why do some people aim for excellence and actually achieve satisfying results? Most people languish in a state of unfulfilled potential despite having a sense of motivation towards certain goals in life. He developed a hierarchy of needs, depicted with a pyramid in most expositions of his model. The five levels begin at the base with physiological needs like food and shelter. Above this are safety needs such as job security. He identifies love and belonging as the next level, which includes family and friendship. Esteem is the penultimate level including concepts such as respect, status and recognition. Finally the tip of the pyramid is self-actualization where an individual achieves meaningful goals. Maslow did not consider that one progress linearly through this hierarchy, nor that the categories were rigid. Multiple levels of needs can be satisfied, for instance, by landing a job that fulfills physiological and safety needs while also being an achievement of one’s potential.

Christians have not been entirely comfortable with Maslow’s work. The hierarchy of needs, where one must address basic need before arriving at a place of self-actualization seems to miss the mark when it comes to understanding our nature as fallen beings in need of salvation accomplished by another individual—Christ Jesus. McCleskey and Ruddell critically evaluate Maslow’s theory of motivation from a biblical worldview. In their assessment, they find his theory actually offers little of actual help. “So, there is no real hope in Maslow’s approach beyond a vague belief in a secular, utopian, theoretical possibility” (“Taking a Step Back—Maslow’s Theory of Motivation: A Christian Critical Perspective,” JBIB 23 [2020] 14). A fundamental flaw seems to be the individualistic paradigm. Even though connection to others is included in the hierarchy, family and friendship seem to be expressed as a need that support personal achievement. A biblical vision of life fulfilment seems to reverse this, as a deepening walk with Christ brings one closer to God and others.

In fairness to Maslow, he was not aiming to develop a theory that adhered to Christian theology, and in some respects, we can perceive that some basic elements of his theory can be connected to Christian practices. The Bible showcases a variety of personal spiritual disciplines—such as prayer, meditation, fasting, and giving—that foster spiritual growth and a deeper connection to Christ. There seems to be a simplified hierarchy of the disciplined life at the base and greater freedom at the pinnacle. Interestingly, the Christian disciplines seem to promote abstinence from elements of Maslow’s hierarchy—fasting, solitude, humility—on the journey to spiritual fulfilment.

Seligman and Peterson on Core Virtues

A different take on human flourishing was articulated by Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson in the book Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004). Here they apply historical and cultural analysis to identify six core virtues that seem to have a high amount of similarity across different cultures. These core virtues—courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, wisdom—aggregate other similar virtues, such that we might consider these master virtues that entail other excellence qualities. Whether we fully agree with the listing or definitions of these core virtues, it is interesting to see a shift towards values that would be appreciated within both classical and Christian spheres.

The six core virtues are spelled out in detail by Seligman and Peterson. Courage is “the capacity to overcome fear” (Character Strengths 36) that is manifested not only in the physical sphere, but also in the moral and psychological spheres. They note that courage is not only seen in single acts of courage but also in persistent or chronic spans of courageousness. Additionally, courage is readily seen in heroic examples of the soldierly type, however it is most often an internal state pertaining to things like motivations and decisions.

Justice connotes fairness that is often associated with equity and equality. This virtue can manifest itself differently in collectivist versus individualistic cultures. Concepts of justice can skew towards merit-based reward systems and need-based systems. What seems to transcend this cultural divide is that justice is prevalent in traits like “fairness, leadership, citizenship, and teamwork” (37).

Seligman and Peterson classify the third virtue as “humanity,” defining this as “the virtues involved in relating to another.” Concepts such as generosity and altruism are central to this virtue. They write, “We are quite capable of and often willing to engage in acts of generosity, kindness, or benevolence that are consensually recognized and valued and that elevate those who witness them” (37-38).

Temperance is “the virtue of control over excess.” Seligman and Peterson include in this virtue concepts pertaining to abstinence from various appetites such as eating, drinking and sex, general self-restraint, and the ability to regulate one’s emotions. “Thus,” they write, “temperance is a form of self-denial that is ultimately generous to the self or others—prudence and humility are prime examples” (38). I think their inclusion of the word “generous” provides a positive hue to what might otherwise be construed as potentially harmful to self.

Transcendence can be difficult to define. Seligman and Peterson borrow from Kant and call this “the connection to something higher—the belief that there is meaning or purpose larger than ourselves” (38). People can feel this when they look up at the expanse of stars in the night sky or stand on the beach by the ocean, feeling a sense of the immensity of the universe and our own smallness within it. There is a sense of awe, however, in this perception of one’s insignificance that has an uplifting effect.

Wisdom is a virtue that has classical and Christian traditions associated with it. Seligman and Peterson call wisdom “a form of noble intelligence” that can be described as “knowledge hard fought for, and then used for good” (39). The enumerate strengths included within this virtue such as creativity, curiosity, judgment and perspective.

The turn to virtues as a marker of human flourishing has been found to be more consistent with a biblical worldview than what we found with the hierarchy of needs. We see similar kinds of character traits listed in the virtue lists of Paul’s letters (e.g., Col. 3:12-13). There is a practical wisdom that connects the biblical tradition with the same kind of classical virtue ethic of the ancient philosophical tradition we investigated earlier.

Csikszentmihalyi on Flow

A final figure who has contributed significantly to our understanding of positive psychology is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “me-high chick-sent-me-high”). Famous for the term “flow,” he has studied the internal experience of high performance. Instead of looking at the character traits we are aiming for (virtues) or the pyramid of requisite conditions to achieve high performance (hierarchy of needs), by looking at the feeling of optimal performance, he has attempted to articulate a common human experience. We often think of high performance as the domain of peak experiences, such as winning a tournament or being awarded a Nobel prize. However, getting “into the zone” is something children experience when they are absorbed in play. This differentiates achievement from the cognitive state of high performance.

It’s one thing to describe a common shared experience, and another to figure out how one can enter into this state. Flow is a state of complete immersion in an activity such that one experiences a state of effortless concentration and timelessness. Some of the factors the lead to a state of flow come from 1) the optimization of requisite skill and perceived challenge, a state described by Vygotsky as the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and 2) the amount of personal motivation to engage in a task. In other words, this is a goal-oriented activity that matches skill to challenge. As Csikszentmihalyi describes it:

“The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forgoes everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives” (Flow 6).

Notice how the word “struggle” implies that at times there might be feelings of strain or even pain in the experience. Csikszentmihalyi describes how a swimmer might feel aching muscles whilst fully absorbed in training. An author might feel a sense of mental strain while fully absorbed in typing out the next moment in the emerging plot of a novel.

Csikszentmihalyi himself sees connections between the classical tradition and what he calls “the flow of thought.” Jason Barney, in his book The Joy of Learning, expands on this with a view to how to incorporate the concepts of flow in the classical classroom. In many respects, the work being done on deliberate practice stems from the idea of flow. The sense of effortless absorption in a task actually comes through applied effort in skills development.

Practices for Classical Educators

Having looked at the history of positive psychology, especially through an examination of three prominent figures, we can make some generalizations that will be helpful for classical educators. To begin with, the idea that psychology has something to contribute to our understanding of healthy internal processes provides us with some grounding to move away from solely viewing the person as a set of potential psychological disfunctions. Many students and parents self-diagnose things like ADHD, anxiety and depression. Understandably, many people react to negative feelings by trying to understand what is going on at a mechanistic level internally. Regrettably, individuals who lock in on such concepts can rely on misconceptions of these disorders, blaming them for deficiencies in knowledge and skills, and then limit their full engagement in productive practices that would cultivate positive feelings about their work and their selves. This does not mean that we would caution individuals from seeking help from qualified professionals. But interestingly, these professionals would actually prescribe some of the very practices associated with positive psychology—techniques to enhance singular focus, quite meditation, and deliberate practice.

Practically, there are several ways we can bring concepts of positive psychology into our classrooms in highly productive ways. First, cultivate virtues through well-planned habit training. For instance, when we think about temperance, it is rather difficult simply to tell students to be more self-controlled. So we need to put in the work of articulating what this looks like in daily life. We might choose some daily practices like sitting in “ready position” or organizing their locker. We support their efforts by succinctly describing the habit (two feet on the floor, back straight, energetic face) and reinforcing this consistently over the span of several days and weeks. It’s wonderful to see how a positive feeling about their work emerges as they are coached in what it looks like to work effectively in a classroom. Self control leads to self satisfaction.

Second, the disciplined life leads to higher orders of freedom and privilege. I think this may be what Maslow was attempting to describe, even though I think his hierarchy of needs is flawed in many ways. There’s something biblical about a shift in our thinking. The person who disciplines themselves to read scripture and pray daily gains the privilege of a closer walk with God and experiences freedom in Christ more consistently. The same can be said for more mundane aspects of life. The person who learns to effectively budget their income gains freedom to spend their money according to the plan they’ve set out. The athlete who has disciplined their body through regular training can run faster and farther through less effort. So, when we are training our students to “show their steps,” this disciplined approach in mathematics leads to great freedom in understanding mathematical processes and the privilege of working on higher orders of mathematical concepts.

Third, being more rigid on skills development up front leads to the experience of flow later. There are indeed better ways of doing things, and teaching these ways early assist students to fly higher long term. For instance, teaching students how to create flash cards on paper and being insistent on regular daily review is a skill that helps students learn things like vocabulary, math formulas and historical information in a thorough way. I used to think this was a nice add on for students to use if they had time and inclination. But over the years, I’ve seen the pattern that students who really thrive have put this tool into practice regularly. So this, for me, is no longer a nice add on but a first-order practice. You can think of other practices like showing steps in math, formatting a page in MLA format and sentence diagramming that cause early sweat but aim towards mastery, which entails greater ease and joy later.

It is interesting how positive psychology has championed the cause of encountering challenge and doing hard things. An impression some might have of positive psychology is that people need to boost their internal attitudes artificially by maybe telling themselves they’re great. Instead, much of the literature points toward how valuable challenge, grit and discipline are in cultivating a life of ease and happiness. Hopefully this brief overview of positive psychology gives you a few insights and practical tools that helps you to explore this field more.

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It is likely that Jefferson borrowed the three rights from John Locke. Almost a century prior to the American declaration, the English philosopher had written in Two Treatises on Government that government existed to protect a person’s “life, liberty and estate.” By estate, Locke surely meant property or “the possession of outward things,” as expressed in A Letter Concerning Toleration. We can find, however, in Jefferson’s revision of Locke’s three rights, a synthesis of Lockean philosophy, particularly drawing upon Locke’s phrase the “pursuit of true and solid happiness” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Jefferson’s synthesis of Lockean philosophy marked a turn away from previous expressions of rights in the Americas, particularly in the “Virginia Declaration of Rights” adopted in his home state a month prior to the ratification of the U.S. Declaration.

What all this means in terms of political philosophy is for greater minds than mine to figure out. The idea of happiness and the pursuit of it ought to capture our attention. What is “true and solid happiness?” To answer this, we need to address the matter of what we mean by “the good life.” I like how Jonathan Pennington puts it in Jesus the Great Philosopher:

“The Good Life is not referring to the lives of the rich and famous as revealed in the tabloid or expose show. The Good Life refers to the habits of practiced wisdom that produce in the human soul deep and lasting flourishing.”

Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 29.

The good life requires an amount of practice in the habits of virtue. Only when well-practiced in the way of wisdom can a person experience “true and solid happiness.”

What is Happiness?

So what exactly is happiness? This is a question that goes all the way back to the ancient philosophers. Plato, for instance, understands happiness as the highest aim or goal of life. There is a moral aspect to this happiness encompassed in the word eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία). It could be the stronger feeling of unhappiness occurs when one falls short of this goal or target. Sin or hamartia (ἁμαρτία) in this understanding is a falling short of the highest aims of life or missing the mark, to draw upon the imagery of archery. This is the essence of tragedy, according to ancient writers. The individual who is not heroic enough to live up to the highest aim of life and yet is not truly a villain, falls short of the eudaimonic standard. Misfortune befalls that person though the simple circumstances of life, and that individual falls prey to their own frailty, thereby experiencing unhappiness not because they are the worst of villains, but rather because of not living up to the high ideal of the good life.

Plato spells out different forms of happiness in the allegory “The Charioteer” that is instructive. In the Phaedrus, he shares the story of a charioteer driving two winged horses each having an opposite character. The first is wild with passion and impulsivity. It is easily distracted by fleeting desires and would easily be led off course. This horse is most interested in instant pleasures. These characteristics make it such that the charioteer must ever be watchful over this horse and can never have a moment of ease, because he cannot trust the horse to guide itself toward the proper path ahead.

The second horse is a noble creature. It loves what is honorable, modest and temperate. Guided by a simple direction, this horse pursues a pathway to that end despite the many distractions that might meet it on the highway. The charioteer has instilled many good habits, training the noble horse such that the charioteer has implicit trust in the animal, safe in the knowledge that nothing could cause this horse to stray from the proper path ahead.

I think this allegory speaks to something within all of us. We are simultaneously the wild and the well-trained horse, contain both base passions and noble bearing. And yet, we can differ from one another in how much we entrust to which horse to guide us in life. It is this very idea that has caused confusion as to the meaning of Jefferson’s phrasing, “the pursuit of happiness.” In the guise of the first horse, this is the pursuit of fleeting desires, it is the distracted life of instant pleasures. These are simply not the hallmarks of the highest aim of life. Rarely would we say that a life spent in fleeting desires and instant pleasures is a life well lived. After many years inundated by advertisements that equate these desires and pleasures with the good life, we are often tempted to consider these as the status symbols of nobility. But I think this is hardly the Jeffersonian vision. It is certainly not envisioned in the ancient philosophical tradition. And hardly the biblical vision of the good life.

Our definition of happiness seems more associated with the second horse. The horse of noble bearing charts a course towards the true end of the journey, recognizing fleeting desires and instant pleasures as distractions from the deeply satisfying bliss of accomplishing life’s highest aim. Now it might be argued that we cannot arrive at that highest aim, so wouldn’t it just be good enough to simply enjoy the fleeting desires and instant pleasures life affords. But what one notices about the second horse is that the deeply satisfying bliss comes not in the conclusion of the journey, but on the entirety of the pathway towards that end. Whether we arrive at our highest aim or not, it is the pursuit of that deeply satisfying bliss that is itself deeply satisfying. This, then, must be our definition of happiness.

The Dopamine Problem

I alluded a moment ago to the fact that both horses reside within. It would be too simple to equate our dopaminergic system with the wild horse, even though dopamine generally gets a bad rap. Our motivational system utilizes an array of neurotransmitters to reward us, giving us that feeling of pleasure in response to stimuli our body wants more of. It would be all too easy to equate happiness with hormones in our brains. And yet, this whole system is entirely relevant.

Suffice it to say that the dopaminergic system is rather blind to the type of stimulus it receives. One can experience a dopamine release from reading a good book or taking a bite of cotton candy. You and I know there’s a significant difference in time invested as well as the relative the health benefits of these two activities. But our neurology cares not. There is a release of dopamine for either activity. To put it another way, both horses get fed even though one is a wild horse liable to go astray in pursuit of fleeting pleasures while the other is a noble and faithful creature.

A recent study was able to find, though, a dopaminergic answer to the question of instant versus delayed gratification. Yes, we get a dopamine hit regardless. However, a 2021 study investigated the dopaminergic (DAergic) release differential during delayed gratification in comparison to instant gratification. They write:

“We found remarkable and sustained DAergic activation when mice managed to wait longer and further demonstrated a causal link between DAergic activation and the increase in transient waiting probability. Furthermore, we found DAergic activity ramps up in a consistent manner during waiting, mimicking the value of waiting along with a series of states in our Continuous Deliberation RL model, both of which presumably contributed to pursuing a more valuable future goal and resisting the distraction of the less-optimal immediate options in our task.”

Gao, Zilong et al. “The neural basis of delayed gratification.” Science Advances vol. 7,49 (2021).

In exchange for an allegory of horses, we now have the mythology of mice in rather modern garb. Let’s break down what this study finds. For mice that waited, or experienced delayed gratification, the dopamine release was stronger, and there was more of it experienced over time. Not only that, but there was another impact in that the anticipation of a future goal caused an amount of dopamine to be released. In simple terms, the dopamine experienced with fleeting desires and instant pleases does not stack up against the dopamine experienced with deeply satisfying bliss. Or to put it yet another way. Although both horses get fed, one gets a basic meal while the other receives a more balanced diet.

So what keeps us from the pursuit of this better quality dopamine reward? Why is it that today we tend not to feed our better horse with a healthy diet and are quite happy to go on feeding a fattened wild horse? The answer to this is effort.

The pursuit of true happiness is effortful work. The pathway to deeply satisfying bliss is often not much fun and is associated with highly demanding practices. If we take seriously, however, the thesis of Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, it is the effortful work that is both rare and valuable in our world of distraction. What emerges is an economy of higher and lower values. I could scroll Facebook, and my dopaminergic system really likes that in the moment. In fact, it will tell me to keep on scrolling to squeeze out just a little bit more dopamine. But when I wake up from the rather shallow world of Facebook scrolling, I end up feeling empty and hollow. I get the symptoms of effortful work, but nothing to show for it. I feel like I did something, but in the end it amounts to nothing.

Compare this to, say, writing a 3000-word article on happiness (or reading a 3000-word article on happiness as you are now doing). It takes genuine effort to piece together a stream of thoughts. One must be careful to write clearly and accurately. There is intellectual work to be done both in the writing and in the reading of such a work. And when one is done with such a work, the feeling of tiredness occurs because effort was spent. It is demanding work. Attention must remain focused. There are moments when it is not quite fun. But in the end, not only does one feel like something was done, there is something of quality to show for one’s effort. Obviously, the reader will have to evaluate the relative quality of the writing and the thinking. But let’s say the writing is of rather middling quality. It still stands as something accomplished. Sure, one could go on to improve upon the ideas and the clarity of expression. The deep satisfaction comes at the thought that good effort has been spent, even if one has not arrived at the highest ideal.

Practicing Happiness

Practicing happiness has been a bit of a catch phrase in positive psychology. It is a method of proactively cultivating positive emotions to improve our wellbeing. When we cultivate gratitude, kindness, and optimism, there are positive effects that can be seen in our physical and mental health. In light of the discussion above, I want to add to this line of reasoning that effortful work put into our moral formation seems to be exactly the kind of endeavor that aligns with this concept of practicing happiness.

Many turn to positive psychology in an effort to alleviate stress. So it might seem strange to engage in effortful work. Here I think the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on “flow” gives us a framework for understanding how effortful work can actually be a stress management tool. A very basic understanding of flow is the experience a person has when they are fully immersed in what they are doing. I often imagine my son immersed in building with Legos when he was younger. He could sit for hours building without any real sense of an outside world. He was fully absorbed in what he was doing.

In his work on “flow” Csikszentmihalyi considers two realities that are present. The first reality we might call detachment. The immersive state causes an individual to “forget all the unpleasant aspects of life.” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) Thus, a deep engagement in effortful work can be a practice of detachment from anxiety and stress. We frequently engage in stress relieving activities such as watching YouTube videos or playing video games to create a type of detachment. But these activities are rarely ones that get us into the flow state that Csikszentmihalyi describes. So, the next time you are beset with anxiety or stress, consider some kind of more effortful practice that could get you into a state of flow. It could be as simple as piecing together a puzzle, tending a garden plot or reading a book.

The second reality we might call experiential happiness. Csikszentmihalyi shares how the flow state is associated less with hedonic pleasure and more with eudemonic happiness. This sounds rather familiar! By choosing experiences that immerse us into effortful work, we build up a reservoir of happiness that deepens as we acquire greater skill, see progress in our work, and have something to show for our work. Consider the happiness that is gained as a puzzle is completed, a garden bed blooms in season after season, or our bookshelf showcases a number of beloved favorites. For me the practice of running has been a place of flow. For years I have tracked my mileage and feel a deep satisfaction in the places I’ve run, the people I’ve run with, and the insights I’ve gained out on the trails.

This kind of deep work, of entering into flow, is an investment in yourself and you reap the reward of better mental and physical health. Now what I would like to add to my basic thesis here is that effortful work on our moral formation can’t help but contribute to a betterment of our mental and physical health. This takes me back to the ancient philosophers. Happiness or eudaimonia occurred as a result of virtues or arete (ἀρετή). Both Plato and Aristotle see virtues as excellences that we practice.

Newport, for his part, seems to have a profound understanding of this philosophical tradition when he describes the “sacredness inherent in traditional craftsmanship.” (Newport, Deep Work). Virtues are practices just like a wheelwright or blacksmith practices their craft. We grow in the skill of courage or faithfulness. We don’t acquire courage and then consider that done. In other words, there is always more to learn as we exercise the moral part of ourselves.

This leads to a consideration of how all of life is the pursuit of virtue. I really like how Alasdair MacIntyre captures the interplay of the virtues and the good life in his book After Virtue. He writes:

“The virtues are precisely those qualities the possession of which will enable an individual to achieve eudaimonia and the lack of which will frustrate his movement toward that telos. But although it would not be incorrect to describe the exercise of virtues as a means to the end of achieving the good for man, that description is ambiguous.”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 148.

From this we gather that one cannot pursue happiness without the possession of virtues. This speaks to how important it is to set our young ones on a path of virtue from an early age. To do otherwise is to set them on a course of frustration throughout life. This does not mean that virtue cannot be acquired when older. But how much easier is it when a course is set properly from the beginning. MacIntyre goes on, though, to elaborate how the good life entails the continual practicing of virtues.

“But the exercise of the virtues is not in this sense a means to the end of the good for man. For what constitutes the good for man is a complete human life lived at its best, and the exercise of the virtues is a necessary and central part of such a life, not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such a life.”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 149.

This sounds like a call for daily exercise, not of the physical sort, but of the moral sort. The virtues are to be practiced like a basketball free throw is practiced. One considers good moral exemplars, and then tries to “follow through” like they do. Each new day brings a new opportunity to practice patience or moderation or humility or any other virtue. Many of us will have daily practices such as a time of prayer, a run, or a family dinner. These are highly commendable and worth maintaining. To these I would recommend a daily virtue practice. It might look like the virtue journal kept by Benjamin Franklin. Or it might simply be a daily contemplation of a virtue you will practice. The idea here is to treat virtue as something to be continually exercised in the pursuit of true happiness.

A Biblical Exposition on Happiness

Far from being a coda or a proforma addition to what has largely been a philosophical article up to this point, I find it striking how the biblical testimony has always had an undercurrent of moral direction connected to personal happiness in communion with God. I recollect coming across this in my research on 1 Peter where Peter quotes Psalm 34. Despite his reputation as an “uneducated, common” man (Acts 4:13), Peter’s epistle stands alongside the great philosophers for its depth of thought and expression.

Psalm 34 as he quotes it reads:

“Whoever desires to love life and see good days,

Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit;

Let him turn away from evil and do good;

Let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

And his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Surrounding this quotation, Peter calls his readers to live a blessed life through the practice of virtues. He list several in 1 Peter 3:8—unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, a humble mind. In this life, we won’t be able to follow the path of happiness unhindered. This he writes, “But even if you should suffer for righteousess’ sake, you will be blessed” (1 Peter 3:14).

What we can take from this is that the Christian life is a well-practiced life. I am quick to point out how much we are reliant on the work of Christ to make us righteous and to provide the energies of our sanctification. But let us be clear that in following in the footsteps of Christ (1 Peter 2:21), we are indeed a fellowship of virtue practicers. Our course in following Christ is set on seeing good days and desiring to love life.

I am mindful as I conclude that I haven’t mentioned one word about education. And that is fine. As this is the summertime, this article is meant first and foremost to feed the souls of educators rather than to provide a teaching methodology. Yet, I think one can discern in and through much that is written here how central these ideas are to a sound philosophy of education. What is the highest calling for us as educators, but to show our students the pathway to happiness in life. And that will come as we ourselves enter into this pursuit of happiness.

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Today the term ‘philosophy’ is almost synonymous with abstract questioning and skepticism; too often the modern discipline is construed as anything but practical—more likely to be concerned with whether or not we are in the matrix, or if words have any definite meaning at all, than how to live life in the here and now. As Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi mentions in his classic Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:

“’Philosophy’ used to mean ‘love of wisdom,’ and people devoted their lives to it for that reason. Nowadays professional philosophers would be embarrassed to acknowledge so naïve a conception of their craft. Today a philosopher may be a specialist in deconstructionism or logical positivism, an expert in early Kant or late Hegel, an epistemologist or an existentialist, but don’t bother him with wisdom.” (138)

The specialization of modern philosophy has resulted in a focus on the obscure to the neglect of the tried and true. To be sure, deep and unanswerable questions are not new to the philosophical tradition, but the workable wisdom of the tradition has too often gotten lost in abstruse reasonings.

Part of the problem with this development is that philosophy is neglected among the young: at our PreK-12 schools and in home education. Parents, teachers and curriculum planners have imbibed the assumption that philosophy is for college students. The unfortunate outcome is that few college students have been inspired with the love of wisdom that would make collegiate study of philosophy fruitful. But more than that, the moral reflection and wisdom necessary for life are absent from the time of life when they are most necessary to form character.

Of course, I know very well that philosophy was conceived of as the culmination of the liberal arts tradition. (Clark and Jain make a movement in the right direction by according it a place in 9^th-11th grades in their paradigm; see The Liberal Arts Tradition, 2^nd ed. Appendix VI, p. 287.) In the Roman period only after gaining mastery of the liberal arts of language and mathematics would a student proceed to Athens or some other school of philosophers to pursue the deepest questions. But this didn’t mean that philosophical questions were neglected along the way. And if we’re going to recapture the love of wisdom and restore the school of philosophers in our educational renaissance, we’re going to have to find ways to embody the issues and subject matter of moral philosophy more clearly in our pre-college teaching.

There are three clear steps to doing this that are more or less hinted at in our psychologist’s reflections on finding joy and fulfillment by getting into the flow of thought through amateur philosophy. They are 1) to recapture the vision of teachers and parents as amateur philosophers, 2) to embrace the humble path of wisdom, and 3) to avoid the trap of specialization by becoming philosophical generalists, approaching every subject from the perspective of moral philosophy.

Teachers as Philosophers

Our cultural conception of the ideal teacher is haunted by the ghost of amateur philosophers. Mr. Miyagi from the 1984 film The Karate Kid is a good example of this. While the character Daniel benefits from the domain knowledge and skill of Mr. Miyagi in karate, what he is really in need of is instruction in a way of life. Mr. Miyagi teaches him how to overcome obstacles and setbacks, by, for instance, repairing the damaged bicycle that Daniel had simply thrown into the dumpster. Even Mr. Miyagi’s famous trick of teaching Daniel karate blocks through household chores is just as much a moral and spiritual lesson about humbly accepting the necessity of work and submitting to elders or the tradition even when you don’t understand. And the heart of the movie turns on the acceptance of tragedy and grief through stoic and eastern conceptions of self-mastery.

This is just one example that could be multiplied many times, with the point being that our culture still has this dream of a philosopher-teacher whose role it is to guide us on a quasi-religious quest for wisdom and the good life. This fact owes something to Socrates and to stoics like Epictetus, but also to many others in a great tradition of philosophical schools down through the centuries.

But in the modern educational system the possibility for teachers to take on this role has been all but crowded out through the domain-specific siloing of teachers into prescribed time-windows and the competing conception of teachers as professional bureaucrats who dare not venture into the personal lives and values of their students. (To be sure, if my children were attending a government school, I’m not sure I would want just anybody trying to play Mr. Miyagi for them….)

In the late 19^th and early 20^th century Charlotte Mason expressed a similar critique, except that she feared that a focus on cramming content into students was undercutting the teacher-philosopher approach. She felt that her philosophy of “living books” tested immediately by narration went a substantial way toward avoiding this problem:

“The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.” (vol. 6 p. 32)

The logic here is that when a teacher is too focused on forcing content into the minds of students, he or she is not able to focus on being the philosophical mentor that the student needs. Since the practice of narration helps to ensure that content is being assimilated well, the teacher is free to all but ignore that and focus on the deeper questions, the moral and intellectual habits of the student, and where next to point the student in their journey toward wisdom.

This dovetails well with the problem of specialization mentioned earlier. Our psychologist’s goal is, of course, to make us all amateur philosophers, and so his encouragements are particularly helpful to us as teachers, as we consider taking up Mr. Miyagi’s mantle:

 “Amateur philosophers, unlike their professional counterparts at universities, need not worry about historical struggles for prominence among competing schools, the politics of journals, and the personal jealousies of scholars. They can keep their minds on the basic questions.” (138)

Teachers at PK-12 schools and home educators should view themselves as amateur philosophers and focus on the big picture and the basic questions of philosophy. We should major on the majors, especially because we have the freedom to do so, but also because it’s what our students need at this stage in their development. And while natural philosophy and metaphysics have an important place, moral philosophy is the beating heart of an education centered on the formation of character or the development of virtue. Therefore moral philosophy should be pursued with an appropriate passion, as Socrates did, focusing on almost nothing else.

The Humble Path of Wisdom

For some of us teachers and parents, this will mean going back to philosophical school ourselves, in the sense of dusting off that old philosophy textbook from college. Or, even better, we could pick up for the first time those philosophical classics the textbook references, like Xenophon’s Memorabilia or The Memorable Sayings of Socrates, any of Plato’s Dialogues, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, or Epictetus’ Enchiridion. If we’re going to approach our teaching with a philosophical spirit, we have to catch the bug somewhere. It’s best to embrace that humble path of wisdom-seeking for ourselves and learn to revel in it. As our psychologist comments,

“Again, the importance of personally taking control of the direction of learning from the very first steps cannot be stressed enough. If a person feels coerced to read a certain book, to follow a given course because that is supposed to be the way to do it, learning will go against the grain. But if the decision is to take that same rout because of an inner feeling of rightness, the learning will be relatively effortless and enjoyable.” (139)

Of course, this is good advice if our goal is only attaining flow in the pursuit of wisdom for ourselves. However, one of the first principles of philosophy, or the love of wisdom, is that it cannot be merely self-referential in this way. Csikszentmihalyi has caught himself in a philosophical paradox here, recommending the modern dream of a light and easy path of pleasure.

Reading whatever I feel like doesn’t seem like the transcendent pursuit of wisdom. After all, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), and a sense of humility and submission to the tradition in the midst of and in spite of painful emotions is one of the first lessons we have to learn. Even Mr. Miyagi knew that…. (“Wax on… wax off.”)

Christ’s yoke may be easy and his burden light to the one who has taken it on himself (see Matt 11:30), but this is only so for the one who has taken up his cross to follow the master to the place of his own brutal execution. Even for Socrates, the love of wisdom was a “practice of death” (Phaedo 81a). So perhaps I should rather urge you to read philosophy not for flow and pleasure, but for pain and death, and because you must, not because you will want to. Such is the minimum commitment necessary of one who would be a philosopher-teacher.

The Philosophical Generalist

But reading in this way to become philosopher-guides, we do not therefore embrace the steep climb of the specialist. We may need to climb the steep hill of Parnassus, or of Sinai, or finally of Calvary, but that is a different thing. As our psychologist mentions, specialization has its pitfalls:

“While specialization is necessary to develop the complexity of any pattern of thought, the goals-ends relationship must always be kept clear: specialization is for the sake of thinking better, and not an end in itself. Unfortunately many serious thinkers devote all their mental effort to becoming well-known scholars, but in the meantime they forget their initial purpose in scholarship.” (139)

We can be content to be generalists, especially if we can zero in on wisdom as the goal, rather than even the enjoyment of the pursuit of wisdom, which after all is a rather strange self-referential circle that our secular psychologist is unwittingly leading us into.

Part of the reason he feels he must do this is because of the splintering of moral philosophy into the social sciences (like psychology) in the first place. In The Liberal Arts Tradition (2^nd ed) Clark and Jain tell of the quest of the modern social sciences, like psychology, ethics or economics, to unmoor themselves from the unproven assumptions of traditional moral philosophy:

“The contemporary social sciences… often attempt to study aspects of man in isolation from one another without reference to man as a whole person in society pursuing happiness in and through his relationships. They also tend to ignore the central question of how virtue and meaning in life contribute to human happiness…. The methodologies of the contemporary social sciences implicitly critique traditional moral philosophy by suggesting it relies on assumptions about human nature and human purpose that are not rationally or empirically verifiable.” (132)

Our psychologist feels the need to justify recommending philosophical study merely on the basis of its potential for entering the flow state—an empirically verifiable method of increasing positive emotion. And since we all know positive emotions are a good thing, in a value-less world, he can recommend it to us without breaking our taboos (ironically) of radical individualism, since the positivity of positive emotions is a lowest common denominator value that we can all get on board with.

Of course, one of the reasons that we have been able to go as far with Csikszentmihalyi as we have in this series is that he stands within the new positive psychology movement, which is itself a revival of the virtue tradition of moral philosophy. In fact, Clark and Jain commend Martin Seligman, a founder of the positive psychology movement for how he “has powerfully and successfully unmasked the assumptions of the old therapy model and defended a return to the notions of eudaimonia [happiness or human flourishing], virtue, and the pursuit of meaning in life” (158); he “recognizes that there is a moral nature to human persons and that the social scientists have to recall lost categories such as responsibility, will, character, and virtue” (160).

My readers will have no trouble embracing such concepts, embedded as they are within a Christian worldview. But we can still feel intimidated away from employing these concepts and questions in our teaching. Especially if we’ve received some higher-level academic training, we may have been indoctrinated into the reigning social science dogma that aims to keep philosophy at bay.

When teaching history, for instance, we’re more inclined to focus on insuring proper delivery of content and the mastery of facts. We tend to avoid discussion of the virtue or vice of figures, why certain courses of action were right or wrong, and the questions of proper relationships or the purpose of government. In literature classes, we focus on questions of technique and artistry, authorial background and narrative trivia, to the neglect of the central moral dilemma of the book.

The example of Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi should encourage us to embrace the perspective of moral philosophy in our teaching of any subject, but especially in the humanities. Where are you on your journey in the love of wisdom? Let’s restore the philosophical school in our hearts, our homes, and our PK-12 classrooms.

Previous articles in this series, The Flow of Thought

Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake; Part 2: The Joy of Memory; Part 3: Narration as Flow; Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games; Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom.

Final installment: Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

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Next installment – Part 2: The Way of Wisdom.

The book earned a coveted place on the New York Times bestseller list for 186 weeks, 48 of which sitting at the top for non-fiction. It launched Peale onto the national spotlight, leading him to write over forty books during his career and achieve success as a popular author, motivational speaker, and television guest. Perhaps most importantly, it helped popularize a new way of seeing the world and approaching life’s problems through positive thinking.

Since its publication, “the power of positive thinking” has become something of a mantra in the self-help world. For those who haven’t read the book themselves, they have certainly heard the phrase and, generally speaking, accept it as a truism. Even as the self-help genre of literature has expanded in the last few decades, it seems that few book titles and ideas have taken root in people’s minds quite like Peale’s.

Shawn Achor and the Happiness Advantage

Fast-forward about sixty years. In 2010, Shawn Achor, a graduate of Harvard University with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, published The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work. In it he distills current research in neuroscience and positive psychology for a mainstream audience, showing how the effects of positive thinking can be leveraged for enhancing performance. And with the right culture in place, he argues, positive thinking can transform the future success and performance of not just individuals, but organizations, including businesses, non-profits, and, most relevant to our work at Educational Renaissance, schools. 

So what exactly is Achor’s novel idea? What makes his book different from the growing mound of self-help literature? If you have seen his TED talk, the one that slingshotted him into the national spotlight, you will know that it is his work on the science of happiness.

In it Achor observes that people typically believe a common formula about how to attain happiness: work hard, become successful, and become happy. This process seems fairly intuitive after all. The most successful among us have certainly clocked long hours working, at least, most of them, in order to reach peak performance. And it would seem that the experience of success and all its accompanying benefits–compensation, fame, material comforts–would lead to happiness, or, at least, some forms of happiness for a brief time. This is the underlying principle of the American Dream, is it not? 

But what Achor goes on to show from his research, which is quite fascinating, is that we have the formula precisely backwards. Success doesn’t lead to happiness, Achor argues, but rather, happiness leads to success. Happiness, optimism, and positive thinking fuel performance such that those in the workplace or the classroom who are happy regularly outperform those who tend to work with negative attitudes. This is the happiness advantage that Achor speaks of and it is his grand solution for not simply increasing profit margins in corporations, but for helping teachers achieve better results in their classrooms. 

What is Happiness?

Of course, Achor’s entire theory hinges on two big ideas: 1) his definition of happiness and 2) how to obtain it. So what is his definition? On the one hand, he follows findings in positive psychology to define happiness as “the experience of positive emotions–pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose” (39). In this way, Achor’s understanding of happiness is easily attainable, at least brief moments of it, because it is simply a temporary emotional experience. Barbara Frederickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, for example, lists the top ten positive emotions as joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. At least a few of these emotional states are easy to come by, at least, for a short while. 

But notice that Achor doesn’t limit his understanding of happiness to mere emotional experience. This we might expect of him, especially given his book’s categorization in somewhat of a notorious genre. But Achor, who has a master’s degree in religious ethics, connects happiness to something classical educators should find much more amenable: meaning and purpose. In fact, Achor goes on to crystallize his definition of happiness as “the joy we feel striving after our potential” (40).

This definition hits much closer to home in the classical tradition. In fact, it shares some conceptual likenesses to the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s writings. In general, Aristotle’s definition of happiness can be summarized as life-fulfillment and human flourishing, but a closer look will reveal the integral relationship that exists for the philosopher between happiness and virtue. We will then see that Aristotle’s definition of virtue and Achor’s idea of “striving after our potential” aren’t all that dissimilar, and that both play a role in their views of happiness.

Aristotle on Happiness and Virtue

Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics, writes that, “The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity to virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement” (X.6, 1177a1-2). Virtue, for Aristotle, is the quality that makes something excellent, or that which enables its possessor to perform his own particular function well (Ostwald 304). For example, the virtue of a shoemaker is his functional excellence to produce good shoes, especially as he acquires a growth mindset. An excellent shoemaker has arete, or virtue, with regards to his shoe-making. So the happy life, for Aristotle, is the life in which a person is conformed to excellence, or virtue, qua human being.

The question becomes, then, what does it mean to be excellent as a human being? Aristotle spends quite a bit of time contemplating this question and ultimately concludes that to be excellent as a human being is to possess and practice the virtues. This approach to life, though full of effort, leads to happiness.

There are two chief categories of virtues in Aristotle’s mind, three if you count activities like shoemaking: physical, moral, and intellectual. Physical virtues are those virtues having to do with physical activities, like shoemaking or weightlifting. Moral virtues are those virtues having to do with character such as courage, justice, patience, and truthfulness. And intellectual virtues are those virtues having to do with the mind that one contemplates, such as intuitive understanding, science, craft expertise, practical wisdom, and theoretical wisdom. For Aristotle, the greatest intellectual virtue to contemplate is theoretical wisdom, i.e. knowledge of necessary truths, because it contains the very form of happiness (VI.12, 1144a3-4). However, it is worth clarifying that all the virtues are worthy of practice and contemplation insofar as they entail the pursuit of excellence, which as I’ve said, is the route to happiness. 

Lasting Joy and Life-Fulfillment

So if, for Aristotle, virtue–striving for excellence–is the foundation for happiness, whether the excellence be physical, moral, or intellectual, then we can see that Achor’s definition of happiness as “the joy we feel of striving after our potential” isn’t that far off. When we apply ourselves to deep and meaningful work, getting in the flow and cultivating valuable skills along the way, a certain lasting joy and fulfillment is the result throughout the process. And while Aristotle would be quick to distance emotion from virtue, even joy, he wouldn’t deny there is a relationship. He would simply insist that emotions, which he would view as stemming from the beastly part of being human, be kept in check by the mind, the rational and superior part of being human.

It appears, then, that there is concord between Achor’s and Aristotle’s views on happiness, particularly observed in their insistence on the importance of striving for excellence. Through living a life focused on living out one’s potential, one can experience life-fulfillment, which can lead to flourishing amidst that ongoing process. Of course, it is possible for one to be pursuing the virtuous life and still become the victim of great misfortune. This is why Aristotle himself hesitates to give a perfect formula for happiness. Life is too complex and unpredictable. Nevertheless, the general road to happiness is marked by effort and seeking to apply oneself to an external standard of excellence. This is the pathway of virtue.

But how does this square with Achor’s idea that we should start with happiness rather than end with it? And are these ideas consistent with a Christian worldview? In Part 2 of this blog series, “The Way of Wisdom” I will explore this question as I examine Achor’s recommended practices for experiencing happiness both on the front end as well through the process of striving for excellence. These practices, I will show, have interesting parallels with what Aristotle has to say about habit as well as what scripture says in Proverbs.

Works Cited

Ostwald, Martin. Nicomachean Ethics. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1999

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Flow is his term for the experience of focused effort at some worthwhile pursuit at a level of challenge commensurate with one’s skills. Whether a hobby, work or a meaningful conversation, the experience of flow is immensely rewarding, but it requires full engagement of one’s consciousness and a high level of what Csikszentmihalyi calls “psychic energy.”

It’s because of this requirement that we too often engage in passive entertainment, like TV watching, and less meaningful experiences. We are too tired. And instead of resting fully, we try to avoid the disordered chaos of our untrained minds (no doubt a result of the Fall) by resorting to these attention grabbers and timewasters.

As I mentioned, our psychologist’s findings mirror Aristotle’s claim that the life of virtue, and more specifically the theoretic life, is the happy life. Human flourishing is found in a life of active striving after excellence, in whatever domain surely, but most of all in contemplative pursuits. In his chapter on the Flow of Thought our psychologist breaks down the many paths of the contemplative life, or how to achieve flow in thought, and in so doing provides more arguments for the value of a classical education per page than many of the classical education movement’s best-sellers.

In this article we’re exploring the joy of memory in order to discover how training the memory can contribute to a happy life.

Csikszentmihalyi begins by explaining why remembering something is in itself a pleasurable activity:

“Remembering is enjoyable because it entails fulfilling a goal and so brings order to consciousness. We all know the little spark of satisfaction that comes when we remember where we put the car keys, or any other object that has been temporarily misplaced.” (121)

Even the smallest acts of memory sparkle of the possibility of the flow state, since a goal is being reached. You’ll remember his claim that disorder naturally clouds our consciousness as problem-seeking creatures, and so the memory of some stable fact or idea brings a sort of order to our inner world. And if this is true of remembering where we put the car keys, how much more the important events of our life, the histories of our culture, or the important truths that give our lives meaning.

Debunking the Attack on Memory

Interestingly our psychologist takes on the educational establishment’s attack on “rote memory.” He speaks nostalgically of how his

“grandfather at seventy could still recall passages from the three thousand lines of the Iliad he had to learn by heart in Greek to graduate from high school. Whenever he did so, a look of pride settled on his features, as his unfocused eyes ranged over the horizon. With each unfolding cadence, his mind returned to the years of his youth. The words evoked experiences he had had when he first learned them; remembering poetry was for him a form of time travel.” (123)

For his grandfather remembering these lines is both a source of pride and “a form of time travel” providing a re-emergence of his youthful experiences. We can suppose that this sort of experience gave his grandfather a stability and a richness that those of us who haven’t attained such feats of memory might lack.

Our psychologist goes on to debunk the modern attack on memory with characteristic charity and grace:

“But for a person who has nothing to remember, life can become severely impoverished. This possibility was completely overlooked by educational reformers early in this century, who, armed with research results, proved that ‘rote learning’ was not an efficient way to store and acquire information. As a result of their efforts, rote learning was phased out of the schools. The reformers would have had justification, if the point of remembering was simply to solve practical problems. But if control of consciousness is judged to be at least as important as the ability to get things done, then learning complex patterns of information by heart is by no means a waste of effort. A mind with some stable content to it is much richer than one without.” (123)

His argument turns on the pragmatism of modern education, as if the ability to solve practical problems were the only point of education. One can hear John Dewey’s claims in the background, as he argued against traditional methods on the basis of his evolutionary mindset. For him solving practical human problems was the end-all be-all of life. Yet if we view life broadly enough, controlling consciousness should be a valuable enough goal for even the most ardent Deweyan, especially given how many problems are caused by the internal disorder of our minds. Enter the modern epidemics of anxiety and depression, as simple examples of this fact.

But even without this last point, modern learning science has shown just how valuable having a mind full of data is for problem solving. As the authors of Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning explain,

“Repeated retrieval [of something from memory] not only makes memories more durable but produces knowledge that can be retrieved more readily, in more varied settings, and applied to a wider variety of problems.” (43)

Of course, that doesn’t absolve us of the perennial question of what knowledge and therefore what subjects and books are most important or valuable to be learned and remembered at any particular time. But it does debunk the assault on “rote learning” as simply not useful. And the objection that memorized material must be understood by the children (to some degree) in order to be useful is not to the point. Nobody, so far as I am aware, is advocating that children memorize material that they have no understanding of, even if that accidentally still happens sometimes in practice.

Yet these reflections are far afield from our psychologist’s primary point, which is that the cultivation of memory allows a person to enter the flow of thought and thereby attain a joy that is independent of one’s circumstances. As he explains,

“A person who can remember stories, poems, lyrics of songs, baseball statistics, chemical formulas, mathematical operations, historical dates, biblical passages, and wise quotations has many advantages over one who has not cultivated such a skill. The consciousness of such a person is independent of the order that may or may not be provided by the environment…. She can always amuse herself, and find meaning in the contents of her mind. While others need external stimulation—television, reading, conversation, or drugs—to keep their minds from drifting into chaos, the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self-contained.” (123-4)

As Christians we might think of the stories of martyrs and those imprisoned for their faith, even in recent times, like Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Christian minister imprisoned under the Soviet Union. In his book With God in Solitary Confinement Wurmbrand explains how he survived the ordeal with his sanity intact by sleeping during the day and first composing, then preaching a new sermon each night. In so doing he developed (or already had the gift of) an extraordinary memory. He claimed to be able to recall more than 350 of the sermons he composed in this way after the ordeal, some of which he later recorded in his book.

Setting himself such a task was without doubt a divinely inspired mission and we have no reason to suspect anything other than that he was uplifted by the Holy Spirit in a remarkable way. But it’s interesting to notice how his chosen activity mimics our psychologist’s secular recommendations for attaining a flow of thought independent of one’s environment. Wurmbrand found a divinely-ordained task—he was called as a preacher after all—that he could practice with focused effort utilizing the whole range of his mental abilities. Practicing this task kept him occupied in joyful flow, improving his preaching skills and developing his prodigious memory. And he did this while in the otherwise torturous state of solitary confinement, with not a sound, not a person, not a thing to amuse him or relieve the pain of boredom.

In light of such an example of the joy of memory it’s frankly pitiful that our culture considers rote memorization to constitute painful boredom for kids, who need to be relieved by frequent entertaining pop-culture references, videos or their own smart phones.

Aside: Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!

You can download “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom” on the flow page. Share the page with a friend or colleague, so they can benefit as well.

Memory the Mother of an Inspirational Education

As a matter of fact, the classical tradition has long recognized memory as the foundation of all the virtues of the mind. As Csikszentmihalyi recollects:

“The Greeks personified memory as lady Mnemosyne. Mother of the nine Muses, she was believed to have given birth to all the arts and sciences…. Before written notation systems were developed, all learned information had to be transmitted from the memory of one person to that of another…. All forms of mental flow depend on memory, either directly or indirectly.” (120-1)

In the opening of his Theogony Hesiod names the nine Muses and describes their gift to him of song and the knowledge of the past: they “breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime” he says (trans. Evelyn-White, lines 31-32). By later Roman times each Muse presided over one particular art: Calliopē, epic poetry; Clīo, history; Euterpē, flute-playing (and lyric poetry to the flute); Melpomenē, tragedy; Terpsichorē, choral dancing and singing; Eratō, the lyre and lyric poetry; Polyhymnia, hymns to the gods; Urania, astronomy; and Thalia, comedy.

The common factor that many of these were recited to accompanying music gave rise to our term ‘music’ today, though all the genres of poetry, as well as history and astronomy were included as ‘musical’ subjects. The ‘museum’ too was originally a place where all these arts—and learning generally—were cultivated; the most famous museum was founded by Ptolemy I Soter in Alexandria and was distinct from the well-known library, instead housing scholars and artists who lectured and wrote and discussed the great works.

The point of the myth is that memory is the basis of all these cultural achievements, just as the joy of flow was a contributing factor in the experience of the inspired poets and artists, scientists and history writers. In actual fact the men and women who created these great works began by storing up in their memory the beautiful and inspiring compositions of others. They imitated them and forged their own path out of the raw materials of memory. In this way, memory is the basis for many of the cultural products that we most enjoy in life.

But not only does memory give birth to all the songs and art that we love, the act of recalling such things is itself enjoyable. You don’t have to teach your child to take joy in remembering their favorite songs from the radio. This comes naturally. Simply the act of remembering creates an internal feeling of control and satisfaction that, as our psychologist would say, orders our consciousness. The assumption that students will be dismayed and bothered by the work of “rote memory” may be one of the more pernicious ideas of modern education.

While memorizing itself has the flavor of work about it, the joy of recalling easily overcomes the initial pain of effort. This is especially so when students are set up to be successful. When a class memorizes a poem together, with the teacher’s guidance and patience line by line, the students build confidence the natural way: through completing a challenging task and experiencing the natural reward of the sense of mastery that knowledge entails. But more than that, they regularly come to love the poem itself. The act of recalling it again and again makes the poem theirs in a way that is hard to describe. It is as if the memory has wedded the poem to their consciousness in such a way that it has become a part of them. And of course, there is no one who does not love his own self; in a mystical fashion, memorizing unites knowledge with the soul.

But memorizing word for word is not the only use of memory that will inspire our students. In fact, any act of retrieving from memory something that has previously been learned has the possibility of enacting the flow state. Remembering is challenging work; in a way, it is the work of learning itself, because it is during what learning scientists call “retrieval practice” that the wiring of neural networks is signaled to take place. But just because it is work, if it is engaged in willingly, as a challenge commensurate with our current level of skill, it can be immensely pleasurable. This is, after all, what is often called the joy of learning or the love of learning as a lifelong skill.

Because of this Charlotte Mason recommended the practice of narration in every subject. Narration is when a student is asked to retrieve from memory as much as they can of what they have just read, heard or seen. In giving students the time and accountability to assimilate the new knowledge they have encountered by telling it back, they are given the opportunity of creating a personal connection with the material, and the joy of memory is the natural result.

Tips for Getting in the Flow of Memory

In closing out his chapter our psychologist describes some practical tips for modern adults to use for getting in the flow of memory during daily life. We can translate some of them into ways of helping our children or students enjoy learning as well.

The first tip is to make the work of memory a daily activity, carried with us wherever we go:

“Some people carry with them the texts of choice poems or quotations written on pieces of paper, to glance over whenever they feel bored or dispirited. It is amazing what a sense of control it gives to know that favorite facts or lyrics are always at hand. Once they are stored in memory, however, this feeling of ownership—or better, of connectedness with the content recalled—becomes even more intense.” (124)

Who does not have an abundance of spare minutes waiting at the checkout counter at a store, or for a meeting to start? Punctuating your day with time cultivating your memory of favorite poems or quotations, facts or figures, gives a sense of meaning to those lost minutes. Rather than getting frustrated while driving in traffic, the recitation of some valuable content can occupy the mind with something productive and overcome habits of irrational anger, worry and fear.

This is part of the reason why memorizing Bible verses or passages has helped so many to overcome temptations and vices of many kinds. While there is the power of the truths of scripture themselves to transform the soul, and although God’s Spirit undoubtedly comes to the aid of those who reach out to him in this way, there is also the simple logical benefit of mental preoccupation. It is the pain of mental boredom and frustration that often causes us to seek relief in some sinful pleasure. This is because of the link between attention and willpower. If instead we focused our consciousness on recalling some beautiful and convicting passage of scripture, our whole frame of mind would be changed, and the boredom relieved in a more productive and life-giving way.

Because of this, we shouldn’t feel guilty as teachers about assigning our students short tasks of memory as regular homework. This sort of minor retrieval practice that can be completed in minutes is often enjoyable to children and develops in them life-long habits that are beneficial both academically and morally. Our reticence in this area is the result of the overwhelming modern pressure against “rote learning” that our secular psychologist has already successfully debunked. Little memory assignments are not to burdensome for our students; we do them a disservice by avoiding them.

But the joy of memory can also be developed through life-long learning in some area of interest or hobby. The sense of autonomy in cultivating a personal passion lends a great deal of strength to the task. Csikszentmihalyi recommends deliberately setting out a plan for what in a subject you will work on committing to memory:

“With a good grasp of the subject will come the knowledge of what is worth remembering and what is not. The important thing to recognize here is that you should not feel that you have to absorb a string of facts, that there is a right list you must memorize. If you decide what you would like to have in memory, the information will be under your control, and the whole process of learning by heart will become a pleasant task, instead of a chore imposed from outside.” (124)

This psychological fact is something important to keep in mind as teachers and parents. Whenever possible, it is helpful to enlist the student’s own will and desire in the process of learning and even the selection of tasks and assignments. Of course, if you work in a school setting, a class must receive some uniform assignments, especially in early years and at the beginning of developing a new skill. But treating children as persons created in the image of God includes according them the dignity of autonomy in ways that fit their age and understanding. In Dan Pink’s Drive autonomy is described as one of the major ways to boost motivation.

This doesn’t mean that students become the arbiters of what to learn, rather than the classical tradition and their teachers’ best judgment. But there are ways to cultivate students’ full engagement with the content at hand through appealing to their autonomy in some of the details of assignments. For instance, when deciding on which passage or poem to memorize, why not let the class decide on one they most connected with. In committing to memory the important facts about an author, engage the class in the determination of what are the most crucial details to remember.

Students jump at this sort of opportunity, and, incidentally, it helps them train their judgement in discerning the relevance of different facts. But more than anything, it creates the habits of life-long autonomous learning in them that we should aim to cultivate in ourselves. After all, it’s not just a chore, it’s one of the joys of life itself. How are you cultivating the joy of memory?

Enjoying this series? Jason Barney revised and expanded it into a full-length book that you can buy through the EdRen Bookstore. Complete with footnotes and in an easy-to-share format for teacher training or to keep in your personal library, the book aims to help you apply the concept of flow in your classical classroom.

Future installments: Part 3: Narration as Flow, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games, Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

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