Graduate Preparation for Teaching
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E term general education is I currently used in a variety of I senses. I must therefore make clear at the outset exactly what I shall mean when I employ it here. First, it will be only the part of general education which is a task of the colleges as distinguished from such other agencies of general education as the lower schools and the family. In the second place, I conceive general education to be a part of liberal education as distinguished from vocational education; and this distinction I regard as both sound and in no way invidious. Vocational education, that is, education for a skilled job, is highly important, especially in a civilization such as ours, which is becoming more and more dependent on the various technologies. On the other hand, I have no patience with the conception of liberal education as the sort of education appropriate for a leisured ruling class contrasted with an obedient working class. So to interpret Aristotle's wise remarks on liberal education is to be blind to, their essential intent and to see only the accidental relation of that intent to the particular distribution of leisure and labor, and of freedom and obedience, which happened to exist in the society of Aristotle's day. When the function of liberal education is clearly discerned, one perceives that the content of a liberal education is almost as definite as that of a vocational education, and quite as practical. The utility of a liberal education is of a different sort, less loud and less glaring than that of a vocational education, but at least as great and perhaps even more pervasive. Thus, neither of these two kinds of education is a possible substitute for the other. Both kinds are needed by the members of a society such as ours, which is different from that of Aristotle's day in that it is at once technological and democratic. Our society is one where almost everybody works, where skilled