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“Only C onnect…” The Goals of a Liberal Education

W illiam C ronon

W hat does it mean to be a liberally educated person? It seems such a simple question, especially given the frequency w ith w hich colleges and universities genuflect tow ard this w ell- w orn phrase as the central icon of their institutional missions. Mantra-lik e, the w ords are endlessly repeated, starting in the glossy admissions brochures that high school students receive by the hundreds in their mailboxes and continuing right dow n to the last tired invocations they hear on commencement day . It w ould be surprising indeed if the phrase did not begin to sound at least a little empty after so much repetition, and surely undergraduates can be forgiven if they eventually regard liberal educat i o n a s ei t h e r a m a r k e t i n g p l o y o r a sh i b b o l et h . Y et m a n y o f u s co n t i n u e t o p l a ce g r ea t st o ck i n t h ese w o r d s, b el i ev i n g t h em t o d escr i b e o n e o f t h e u l t i m a t e g o o d s t h a t a co l l eg e o r u n i v er si t y sh o u l d ser v e. So w h a t ex a ct l y d o w e m ea n b y l i b er a l ed u ca t i o n , a n d w h y d o w e ca r e so m u ch a b o u t i t ?

In speak ing of “liberal” education, w e certainly do n o t mean an education that indoctrinates students in the values of political liberalism, at least not in the most obvious sense of the latter phrase. R ather, w e use these w ords to describe an educational tradition that celebrates and nurtures human freedom. These day s lib e r al and libe r ty have become w ords so mired in controversy , embraced and reviled as they have been by the far ends of the political spectrum, that w e scarcely k now how to use them w ithout turning them into slogans—but they can hardly be separated from this educational tradition. Libe r al derives from the Latin libe r alis, meaning “of or relating to the liberal arts,” w hich in turn derives from the Latin w ord libe r , meaning “free.” But the w ord actually has much deeper roots, being ak in to the Old English w ord le o d an , meaning “to grow ,” and leo d , meaning “people.” It is also related to the Greek w ord eleu ther o s, meaning “free,” and goes all the w ay back to the Sansk rit w ord r o d hati, meaning “one climbs,” “one grow s.” Fr e e d o m and g r o w th: here, surely , are values that lie at the very core of w hat w e mean w hen w e speak of a liberal education.

Liberal education is built on these values: it aspires to nurture the grow th of human talent in the service of human freedom. So one very simple answ er to my question is that liberally educated people have been liberated by their education to explore and fulfill the promise of their ow n highest talents. But w hat might an education for human freedom actually look lik e? There’s the rub. Our current culture w ars, our struggles over educational standards are all ultimately about the concrete embodiment of abstract values lik e “freedom” and “grow th” in actual courses and textbook s and curricular requirements. Should students be forced to tak e courses in A merican history , and if so, w hat should those courses contain? Should they be forced to learn a foreign language, encounter a laboratory science, master calculus, study grammar at the expense of creative w riting (or the reverse), read Plato or Shak espeare or Marx or Darw in? Should they be required to tak e courses that foster ethnic and racial tolerance? Even if w e agree about the importance of freedom and grow th, w e can still disagree quite a lot about w hich curriculum w ill best promote these values. That is w hy , w hen w e argue about education, w e usually spend less time talk ing about core values than about formal standards: w hat are the subjects that all y oung people should tak e to help them become educated adults?

This is not an easy question. May be that is w hy —in the spirit of E. D. H irsch’s C u ltu r al Lite r ac y and a thousand college course catalogs—our answ ers to it often tak e the form of lists: lists of mandatory courses, lists of required readings, lists of essential facts, lists of the hundred best novels w ritten in English in the tw entieth century , and so on and on. This impulse tow ard list mak ing has in fact been part of liberal education for a very long time. In their original medieval incarnation, the “liberal arts” w ere required courses, more or less, that every student w as supposed to learn before attaining the status of a “free man.” There w as nothing vague about the ar te s libe r ale s. They w ere a very concrete list of seven subjects: the tr iv iu m , w hich consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the qu ad r iv iu m , w hich consisted of arithmetic, geometry , astronomy , and music. Together, these w ere the forms of k now ledge w orthy of a free man. W e should remember the pow erful class and gender biases that w ere built into this vision of freedom. The “free men” w ho studied the liberal arts w ere male aristocrats; these specialized bodies of k now ledge w ere status mark ers that set them apart from “unfree” serfs and peasants, as w ell as from the members of other vulgar and ignoble classes. Our modern sense of liberal education has expanded from this medieval foundation to include a greater range of human talents and a much more inclusive number of human beings, holding out at least the dream that e v e r y o n e might someday be liberated by an education that stands in the service of human freedom.

A nd y et w hen w e try to figure out w hat this education for human freedom might look lik e, w e still mak e lists. W e no longer hold up as a required curriculum the seven ar te s libe r ale s of the medieval university ; w e no longer expect that the classical nineteenth-century college curriculum in Greek and Latin is enough to mak e a person learned. But w e d o offer plenty of other complicated lists w ith w hich w e try to identify the courses and distribution requirements that constitute a liberal education. Such requirements vary somew hat from institution to institution, but certain elements crop up predictably . H ow ever complex the curricular tables and credit formulas may become—and they can get pretty baroque!—more often than not they include a certain number of total credit hours; a basic composition course; at least pre-calculus mathematics; some credits in a foreign language; some credits in the humanities; some credits in the social sciences; some credits in the natural sciences; and concentrated study in at least one major discipline.

W e have obviously come a long w ay from the ar te s libe r ale s—and y et I w orry that amid all these requirements w e may be tempted to forget the ultimate purpose of this thing w e call a liberal education. No matter how deliberately they may have been hammered out in committee meetings, it’s not clear w hat these carefully articulated and finely tuned requirements have to do w ith hu m an fr eed o m .

A n d w h en w e t r y t o st a t e t h e p u r p o se o f su ch r eq u i r em en t s, w e o ft en fl o u n d er . H er e, fo r i n st a n ce, i s w h a t o n e i n st i t u t i o n I k n o w w el l st a t es a s the “Objects of a Liberal Education”: “(1) competency in communication; (2) competency in using the modes of thought characterist i c o f t h e m a j o r a r ea s o f k n o w l ed g e; (3 ) a k n o w l ed g e o f o u r b a si c cu l t u r a l h er i t a g e; (4 ) a t h o r o u g h u n d er st a n d i n g o f a t l ea st o n e su b j ect a r ea . ” T h i s is the k ind of language one expects from an academic committee, I guess, but it is hardly a statement that stirs the heart or inspires the soul.

One problem, I think , is that it is much easier to itemize the requirements of a curriculum than to describe the qualities of the human beings w e w ould lik e that curriculum to produce. A ll the required courses in the w orld w ill fail to give us a liberal education if, in the act of requiring them, w e forget that their purpose is to nurture human freedom and grow th.

I w ould therefore lik e to return to my opening question and try to answ er it (since I too find lists irresistible) w ith a list of my ow n. My list consists not of required courses but of personal qualities: the ten qualities I most admire in the people I k now w ho seem to embody the values of a liberal education. How does one recognize liberally educated people?

1. The y liste n an d the y he ar .

This is so simple that it may not seem w orth say ing, but in our distracted and over-busy age, I think it’s w orth declaring that educated people k now how to pay attention—to others and to the w orld around them. They w ork hard to hear w hat other people say . They can follow an argument, track logical reasoning, detect illogic, hear the emotions that lie behind both the logic and the illogic, and ultimately empathize w ith the person w ho is feeling those emotions.

2. The y r e ad an d the y u n d e r stan d .

This too is ridiculously simple to say but very difficult to achieve, since there are so many w ay s of reading in our w orld. Educated people can appreciate not only the front page of the Ne w Yo r k Tim e s but also the arts section, the sports section, the business section, the science section, and the editorials. They can gain insight from not only TH E AMERIC AN SC H O L A R a n d t h e Ne w Y o r k R e v i e w o f B o o ks b u t a l so fr o m Sc i e n t i f i c Am e r i c a n , t h e Ec o n o m i st , t h e Na t i o n a l En q u i r e r , Vo g u e , a n d R e a d e r ’ s D i g e st . T h ey can enjoy John Milton and John Grisham. But sk illed readers k now how to read far more than just w ords. They are moved by w hat they see in a great art museum and w hat they hear in a concert hall. They recognize extraordinary athletic achievements; they are engaged by classic and contemporary w ork s of theater and cinema; they find in television a valuable w indow on popular culture. W hen they w ander through a forest or a w etland or a desert, they can identify the w ildlife and interpret the lay of the land. They can glance at a farmer’s field and tell the difference betw een soy beans and alfalfa. They recognize fine craftsmanship, w hether by a cabinetmak er or an auto mechanic. And they can surf the World Wide Web. All of these are w ay s in w hich the ey es and the ears are attuned to the w onders that mak e up the human and the natural w orlds. N one of us can possibly master all these forms of “reading,” but educated people should be competent in many of them and curious about all of them. 3. They c an talk w ith an y o n e.

Educated people k now how to talk . They can give a speech, ask thoughtful questions, and mak e people laugh. They can hold a conversation w ith a high school dropout or a Nobel laureate, a child or a nursing- home resident, a factory w ork er or a corporate president. Moreover, they participate in such conversations not because they lik e to talk about themselves but because they are genuinely interested in others. A friend of mine say s one of the most important things his father ever told him w as that w henever he had a conversation, his job w as “to figure out w hat’s so neat about w hat the other person does.” I cannot imagine a more succinct description of this critically important quality .

4. The y c an w r ite c le ar ly an d pe r su asiv e ly an d m o v in g ly .

W hat goes for talk ing goes for w riting as w ell: educated people k now the craft of putting w ords on paper. I’m not talk ing about parsing a sentence or composing a paragraph, but about expressing w hat is in their minds and hearts so as to teach, persuade, and move the person w ho

reads their w ords. I am talk ing about w riting as a form of touching, ak in to the touching that happens in an exhilarating conversation.

5. The y c an so lv e a w id e v ar ie ty o f pu zzle s an d pr o ble m s.

The ability to solve puzzles requires many sk ills, including a basic comfort w ith numbers, a familiarity w ith computers, and the recognition that many problems that appear to turn on questions of quality can in fact be reinterpreted as subtle problems of quantity . These are the sk ills of the analy st, the manager, the engineer, the critic: the ability to look at a complicated reality , break it into pieces, and figure out how it w ork s in order to do practical things in the real w orld. Part of the challenge in this, of course, is the ability to put reality back together again after having brok en it into pieces—for only by so doing can w e accomplish practical goals w ithout violating the integrity of the w orld w e are try ing to change.

6. The y r e spe c t r ig o r n o t so m u c h fo r its o w n sake bu t as a w ay o f se e kin g tr u th.

Truly educated people love learning, but they love w isdom more. They can appreciate a closely reasoned argument w ithout being unduly impressed by mere logic. They understand that k now ledge serves values, and they strive to put these tw o—k now ledge and values—into constant dialogue w ith each other. The ability to recognize true rigor is one of the most important achievements in any education, but it is w orthless, even dangerous, if it is not placed in the service of some larger vision that also renders it humane. 7. The y pr ac tic e hu m ility , to le r an c e , an d se lf-c r itic ism .

This is another w ay of say ing that they can understand the pow er of other people’s dreams and nightmares as w ell as their ow n. They have the intellectual range and emotional generosity to step outside their ow n experiences and prejudices, thereby opening themselves to perspectives different from their ow n. From this commitment to tolerance flow all those aspects of a liberal education that oppose parochialism and celebrate the w ider w orld: study ing foreign languages, learning about the cultures of distant peoples, exploring the history of long- ago times, discovering the many w ay s in w hich men and w omen have k now n the sacred and given names to their gods. W ithout such encounters, w e cannot learn how much people differ—and how much they have in common.

8. The y u n d e r stan d ho w to g e t thin g s d o n e in the w o r ld .

In describing the goal of his Rhodes Scholarships, C ecil Rhodes spok e of try ing to identify y oung people w ho w ould spend their lives engaged in w hat he called “the w orld’s fight,” by w hich he meant the struggle to leave the w orld a better place than they had found it. Learning how to get things done in the w orld in order to leave it a better place is surely one of the most practical and important lessons w e can tak e from our education. It is fraught w ith peril because the pow er to act in the w orld can so easily be abused—but w e fool ourselves if w e think w e can avoid acting, avoid exercising pow er, avoid joining the w orld’s fight. A nd so w e study pow er and struggle to use it w isely and w ell.

9. The y n u r tu r e an d e m po w e r the pe o ple ar o u n d the m .

Nothing is more important in tempering the exercise of pow er and shaping right action than the recognition that no one ever acts alone. Liberally educated people understand that they belong to a community w hose prosperity and w ell-being are crucial to their ow n, and they help that community flourish by mak ing the success of others possible. If w e speak of education for freedom, then one of the crucial insights of a liberal education must be that the

freedom of the individual is possible only in a free community , and vice versa. It is the community that empow ers the free individual, just as it is free individuals w ho lead and empow er the community . The fulfillment of high talent, the just exercise of pow er, the celebration of human diversity : nothing so redeems these things as the recognition that w hat seem lik e personal triumphs are in fact the achievements of our common humanity .

10. They follow E. M. Forster’s injunction from Howards End: “Only connect . . .”

More than any thing else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to mak e sense of the w orld and act w ithin it in creative w ay s. Every one of the qualities I have described here—listening, reading, talk ing, w riting, puzzle solving, truth seek ing, seeing through other people’s ey es, leading, w ork ing in a community —is finally about connecting. A liberal education is about gaining the pow er and the w isdom, the generosity and the freedom to connect.

I believe w e should measure our educational sy stem—w hether w e speak of grade schools or universities—by how w ell w e succeed in training children and y oung adults to aspire to these ten qualities. I believe w e should judge ourselves and our communities by how w ell w e succeed in fostering and celebrating these qualities in each of us.

But I must offer tw o caveats. The first is that my original question—“W hat does it mean to be a liberally educated person?”—is misleading, deeply so, because it suggests that one can somehow tak e a group of courses, or accumulate a certain number of credits, or undergo an obligatory set of learning experiences, and emerge liberally educated at the end of the process. N othing could be further from the truth. A liberal education is not something any of us ever ac hie v e ; it is not a state. R ather, it is a w ay of living in the face of our ow n ignorance, a w ay of groping tow ard w isdom in full recognition of our ow n folly , a w ay of educating ourselves w ithout any illusion that our educations w ill ever be complete.

My second caveat has to do w ith individualism. It is no accident that an educational philosophy described as “liberal” is almost alw ay s articulated in terms of the individuals w ho are supposed to benefit from its teachings. I have similarly implied that the ten qualities on my list belong to individual people. I have asserted that liberal education in particular is about nurturing human freedom—helping y oung people discover and hone their talents—and this too sounds as if education exists for the benefit of individuals.

A ll this is fair enough, and y et it too is deeply misleading in one crucial w ay . Education for human freedom is also education for human community . The tw o cannot exist w ithout each other. Each of the qualities I have described is a craft or a sk ill or a w ay of being in the w orld that frees us to act w ith greater k now ledge or pow er. But each of these qualities also mak es us ever more aw are of the connections w e have w ith other people and the rest of creation, and so they remind us of the obligations w e have to use our k now ledge and pow er responsibly . If I am right that all these qualities are finally about connecting, then w e need to confront one further paradox about liberal education. In the act of mak ing us free, it also binds us to the communities that gave us our freedom in the first place; it mak es us responsible to those communities in w ay s that limit our freedom. In the end, it turns out that liberty is not about think ing or say ing or doing w hatever w e w ant. It is about exercising our freedom in such a w ay as to mak e a difference in the w orld and mak e a difference for more than just ourselves.

And so I k eep returning to those tw o w ords of E. M. Forster’s: “Only connect.” I have said that they are as good an answ er as any I k now to the question of w hat it means to be a liberally educated person; but they are also an equally fine description of that most pow erful and generous form of human connection w e call lo v e . I do not mean romantic or passionate

love, but the love that lies at the heart of all the great religious faiths: not eros, but agape. Liberal education nurtures human freedom in the service of human community , w hich is to say that in the end it celebrates love. W hether w e speak of our schools or our universities or ourselves, I hope w e w ill hold fast to this as our constant practice, in the full depth and richness of its many meanings: O n ly c o n n ec t.

From The Am er ic an Sc ho lar , Volume 67, No. 4, A utumn 1998. C opy right ® 1998 by W illiam C ronon. W illiam C ronon, Frederick Jack son Turner Professor of H istory , Geography , and Environmental Studies at the U niversity of W isconsin-Madison, is the author of Un c o m m o n Gr o u n d : Rethin kin g the Hu m an Plac e in Natu r e and Natu r e’s Metr o po lis: Chic ag o an d the Gr eat West, w hich w on the Bancroft Prize in 1992.