Abstract
In the classroom as in other areas of public life, Americans confront a difficult question: How can we hope to understand or learn from one another if we do not share a common context of some sort? American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Stanley Cavell can, I believe, help us develop new and significant answers to this question They ask us to reimagine what it is that relates us to one another, such that learning-can take place. And they invite us to discover those relations by practicing the art of reception. This practice of reception, I suggest, offers an important—even urgent alternative to contemporary modes of relating in the classroom.
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