Finer Human Hungers

Yesterday I received an annual report from Lester B. Pearson College, which is only one of my old schools but one that is the closest to my heart. The two years at Pearson College were a life-shaping experience: As a sound-bite, to describe the experience in a sentence, then I used to say, "Two hundred students, 52 countries." Now the number stands at 86 countries as per the Annual Report and 88 as on the website.

But now I begin to understand a bit of what shaped the founding philosophy. While reading the report, I was quite moved to read a quote from Lester B Pearson, Canada's ex- Prime Minister and a Noble Peace Prize winner:

"Education is above all, and ever has been, the process of learning how to think honestly and straight: to distinguish between the true and false; to appreciate quality and beauty wherever it may be found; and to be able to participate and to desire to participate with intelligence and tolerance in that most important of all forms of free enterprise, the exchange of ideas on every subject under the sun, with a minimum of every restriction, personal, social, or political. In a word, education means - and this I think is the best definition of it that I have ever discovered - the 'creation of finer human hungers'."
27th May 1961
Excerpted from Lester B. Pearson's Address to Sir George Williams University

Couldn't have said it better...

May our finer hungers be sated and renewed.