we split the head from the hands, or isolate humane studies from practicallife, we unfortunately tend to suppose that a liberal cultural education is the rightof only an elite few—the heads. Don’t we all—and not just the socially advantaged“heads”—deserve an education that prioritizes human growth?

none of this means we should turn students and teachers intofunctionaries or serfs for, in Dewey’s words in Democracy and Education, a “feudaldogma of social predestination.”

. The problem arises when institutions and policymakers assume,following the logic of the industrial model, that our primary and overriding edu-cational aim is thus to train students to fit the specifications of this existing infra-structure.

The mission of K–12 and higher educationis, in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s infamous words last year, “to develop humanresources to meet the state’s workforce needs.”

“A being of infinitescope,” she wrote, “must not be treated with an exclusive view to any one relation. . . . Give the soul free course. . . and the being will be fit for any and every relationto which it may be called.”1

To use a good book as a sedative is conspicuous waste.