Cronon and Dewey Response

After reading William Cronon’s "“Only Connect...”: The Goals of a Liberal Education” and the chapter “Education as a Necessity of Life” from John Dewey’s Democracy and Education, I noticed a particularly interesting parallel between the two educational theories. The first quality that embodies liberally educated people, according to Cronon, is that they listen and they hear. More specifically, “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 with the person who is feeling those emotions” (3). The seventh quality is related and says that liberally educated people “have the intellectual range and emotional generosity to step outside their own experiences and prejudices, thereby opening themselves to perspectives different from their own” (4). Both of these qualities are not necessarily skills that can be learned exclusively in the classroom. In reality, these are attributes that are acquired by immersing oneself in the community and authentically experiencing the emotions and thoughts of others through communication and interaction. Through these shared experiences, perhaps of the fantastic but more often of the mundane, people are able to learn about and understand others, the world, and themselves. This idea relates to Cronon’s second caveat, in which he states, “Education for human freedom is also education for human community” (5). All of Cronon’s qualities, but especially the two mentioned above, allow us to see the connections we have with other people and the world and to become truly liberally educated. Finally, I noticed a fairly obvious, but nonetheless important, connection to Democracy and Education when Dewey states, “To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified” (5). This idea is very similar to what Cronon was articulating in the two aforementioned qualities. Identifying with the experiences of others and communicating one’s own experiences educates and changes both parties involved in often unique and unexpected ways. In my experience, I have found that while formal education is important, it is the social and real-life education, through everyday interaction and observation of complex human experiences and emotions, that has had the most profound impact on me and made me the person that I am today. That statement seems obvious and rather simple yet may be worth recognizing and thinking about. I realize that people are not simply the sum of the courses they have taken or the textbooks they have read, although those are certainly valuable tools and resources for learning about the world. Returning to Cronon’s list, while I agree in principle with most of the qualities, I don’t believe that is practical for anyone to achieve, although Cronon does admit that it is an endless process. I think the fact that no one is perfect and we all struggle to do our best and to make sense of the world adds to the human connection that Cronon speaks about.

Question: Did either Cronon’s article or the Dewey chapter change your perspective on how the educational system works or should work and its goals?