We might see getting a “liberal education” as an empty goal, but we need to rethink the boundaries that define a liberal education. In William Cronon’s Only Connect… The Goals to a Liberal Education, he talks about the actual standards of a liberal education. Or at least the standards that the world seems to be true. Then he goes on to say what he thinks having a liberal education actually gives you. The ones that I see to be the most valuable are: They read and they understand; They practice humility, tolerance and self-criticism; and they understand how to get things done in the world. Don’t get me wrong, the others are just as important, but I think that as a future educator, these are the ones that I will be using the most. They read and they understand doesn’t just mean with words on a page. They are talking about reading the world around you. You need to be actively engaged with what is happening around them. With my future students, I need to be able to read if something is wrong, which is also where I could use the They listen and they hear value. I need to be the teacher that they can come to when something is wrong. I need to show them that they can trust me. I can use the They practice humility, tolerance and self-criticism with my students because I need to be able to be open-minded with their ideas and the problems they might be facing. Also, I need to have one so I can help them achieve one too. How should a student be expected to have an open mindset if their teacher doesn’t have one? And finally, They understand how to get things done in the world. I want to combine the They can solve a wide variety of problems because I think that his points kind of go together in my mind. He starts off the how to get things done portion with saying we as young people spend their lives stuck in the “world’s fight.” I had never heard of that until reading this. The “world’s fight” is the struggle to leave the world a better place than how we found it. I think this goes hand-in-hand with solving puzzles because in that portion he says that educated people need to have the ability to put reality back together without violating the world we are trying to change. So, as we fix the problems we have, we are also trying to fix the world, which is probably a bigger problem than our own problems. Although sometimes we need to fix ourselves before we can be any help to the world. All of the values I talked about here also go hand-in-hand with the nine precepts of the Norbertine Pedagogy. My favorites from there, that I think everyone should know, are Conversion, Contemplation, Detachment, and Community. I think all of these can relate to any of the values that Cronon was saying. It’s nice to think that we never stop learning, and we can never act like we do. Even if you are an educated person. Also, we need to stop thinking that failure means that we aren’t good at something and that we should never try it again. Failure is needed if you want to succeed. Even if that means taking a step back to breathe and maybe go for a walk. Sometimes its ok to say that our minds hurt, and we need to clear our heads to find the right answer. Finally, we get to what both the Pedagogy says and Cronon says, Community is the most important thing to learning. We need to see that other people have ideas, and they also want theirs to succeed just as much as we want ours to succeed. They aren’t just blank slates that we can push any ideas into, they have their own emotions and opinions. Our community’s well-being is crucial to our own. I as a future educator need to teach my students that they have to be able to take in other’s perspectives even if they don’t match up with ours. That other’s dreams are just as important as our own, and we need to raise others up without knocking them down.
