In his essay 'Only Connect': The Goals of a Liberal Education William Cronon lists ten characteristics he sees in liberally educated persons:

• They listen and they hear.
• They read and they understand.
• They can talk with anyone.
• They can write clearly and persuasively and movingly.
• They can solve a wide variety of puzzles and problems.
• They respect rigor not so much for its own sake but as a way of seeking truth.
• They practice humility, tolerance, and self-criticism.
• They understand how to get things done in the world.
• They nurture and empower the people around them.
• They follow E. M. Forster's injunction from Howards End: "Only connect."

One can, of course, be "liberally educated" without attending an expensive ivy league university — and equally obviously, many who graduate from such establishments are far from "liberally educated".

And, on a less-serious note, the above list inevitably reminds me of the liberally-educated protagonist of yet another underappreciated movie: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Dr. Banzai is a race-car driver, a brain surgeon, a rock musician, and a theoretical physicist who also saves the world. My kind of hero!

(Cronon's list appeared in The Key Reporter, Winter 1998-99, as abridged from his article in the American Scholar, Autumn 1998; cf. PursuitOfExcellence (22 Feb 2002), PartingAdvice (21 Jun 2002), LiberalArts (13 Mar 2003), ...)

TopicEducation - TopicThinking - TopicHumor - TopicEntertainment - 2005-11-02

(correlates: ThisFarInside, Extraordinary Gentlemen, Rule 6, ...)