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Abstract
Willa Cather's life and work were indelibly affected by her educational experiences. The combination of the education she received in Red Cloud and that which occurred at the University in Lincoln provided her with a vision of a specific place and people made universal by her classical education. How and what Cather learned had enormous influence on her art. Cather's view of education was a driving force in her work: she used learning to stave off the increasing materialism of the twentieth century; she wrote vehemently and often of the rights of young people; and she viewed teaching as a means of preserving one's youth. The relationship between teacher and student is critical, to understanding her idea of education. In that connection, there is often a kind of intimacy unequaled in other kinds of human contact. As a student and a teacher, Cather understood the necessity of that intimacy. In her own writing she would use her work as a way of establishing that same degree of understanding with her readers. Ultimately Cather's work champions the idea that an education must do more than enable us to make a living; it must also teach us how to live. What she writes of education makes a prophetic statement even today as liberal education and the humanities seem to be, as she wrote, "having their dark hour."
