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| in defense of a liberal education: In Defense of a Liberal Education Fareed Zakaria, 2015-03-30 CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition. The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. These messages are hitting home: majors like English and history, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline. I get it, writes Fareed Zakaria, recalling the atmosphere in India where he grew up, which was even more obsessed with getting a skills-based education. However, the CNN host and best-selling author explains why this widely held view is mistaken and shortsighted. Zakaria eloquently expounds on the virtues of a liberal arts education—how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically. He turns our leaders' vocational argument on its head. American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years. Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning—precisely the gifts of a liberal education. Zakaria argues that technology is transforming education, opening up access to the best courses and classes in a vast variety of subjects for millions around the world. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history. |
| in defense of a liberal education: In Defense of a Liberal Education Fareed Zakaria, 2015-04-21 CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition. The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. These messages are hitting home: majors like English and history, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline. I get it, writes Fareed Zakaria, recalling the atmosphere in India where he grew up, which was even more obsessed with getting a skills-based education. However, the CNN host and best-selling author explains why this widely held view is mistaken and shortsighted. Zakaria eloquently expounds on the virtues of a liberal arts education—how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically. He turns our leaders' vocational argument on its head. American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years. Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning—precisely the gifts of a liberal education. Zakaria argues that technology is transforming education, opening up access to the best courses and classes in a vast variety of subjects for millions around the world. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Why the Humanities Matter Today Lee Trepanier, 2017-03-08 The humanities in American higher education is in a state of crisis with declining student enrollment, fewer faculty positions, and diminishing public prestige. Instead of recycling old arguments that have lost their appeal, the humanities must discover and articulate new rationales for their value to students, faculty, administrators, and the public. Why the Humanities Matter Today: In Defense of Liberal Education is an attempt to do so by having philosophers, literature and foreign language professors, historians, and political theorists defend the value and explain the worth of their respective disciplines as well as illuminate the importance of liberal education. By setting forth new arguments about the significance of their disciplines, these scholars show how the humanities can reclaim its place of prominence in American higher education. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Politics of Liberal Education Darryl Gless, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, 1992 Controversy over what role “the great books” should play in college curricula and questions about who defines “the literary canon” are at the forefront of debates in higher education. The Politics of Liberal Education enters this discussion with a sophisticated defense of educational reform in response to attacks by academic traditionalists. The authors here—themselves distinguished scholars and educators—share the belief that American schools, colleges, and universities can do a far better job of educating the nation’s increasingly diverse population and that the liberal arts must play a central role in providing students with the resources they need to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Within this area of consensus, however, the contributors display a wide range of approaches, illuminating the issues from the perspectives of their particular disciplines—classics, education, English, history, and philosophy, among others—and their individual experiences as teachers. Among the topics they discuss are canon-formation in the ancient world, the idea of a “common culture,” and the educational implications of such social movements as feminism, technological changes including computers and television, and intellectual developments such as “theory.” Readers interested in the controversies over American education will find this volume an informed alternative to sensationalized treatments of these issues. Contributors. Stanley Fish, Phyllis Franklin, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Henry A. Giroux, Darryl J. Gless, Gerald Graff, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, George A. Kennedy, Bruce Kuklick, Richard A. Lanham, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Alexander Nehamas, Mary Louise Pratt, Richard Rorty, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick |
| in defense of a liberal education: Cultivating Humanity Martha C. Nussbaum, 1998-10-01 How can higher education today create a community of critical thinkers and searchers for truth that transcends the boundaries of class, gender, and nation? Martha C. Nussbaum, philosopher and classicist, argues that contemporary curricular reform is already producing such “citizens of the world” in its advocacy of diverse forms of cross-cultural studies. Her vigorous defense of “the new education” is rooted in Seneca’s ideal of the citizen who scrutinizes tradition critically and who respects the ability to reason wherever it is found—in rich or poor, native or foreigner, female or male. Drawing on Socrates and the Stoics, Nussbaum establishes three core values of liberal education: critical self-examination, the ideal of the world citizen, and the development of the narrative imagination. Then, taking us into classrooms and campuses across the nation, including prominent research universities, small independent colleges, and religious institutions, she shows how these values are (and in some instances are not) being embodied in particular courses. She defends such burgeoning subject areas as gender, minority, and gay studies against charges of moral relativism and low standards, and underscores their dynamic and fundamental contribution to critical reasoning and world citizenship. For Nussbaum, liberal education is alive and well on American campuses in the late twentieth century. It is not only viable, promising, and constructive, but it is essential to a democratic society. Taking up the challenge of conservative critics of academe, she argues persuasively that sustained reform in the aim and content of liberal education is the most vital and invigorating force in higher education today. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Beyond the University Michael S. Roth, 2014-05-28 Contentious debates over the benefits—or drawbacks—of a liberal education are as old as America itself. From Benjamin Franklin to the Internet pundits, critics of higher education have attacked its irrelevance and elitism—often calling for more vocational instruction. Thomas Jefferson, by contrast, believed that nurturing a student’s capacity for lifelong learning was useful for science and commerce while also being essential for democracy. In this provocative contribution to the disputes, university president Michael S. Roth focuses on important moments and seminal thinkers in America’s long-running argument over vocational vs. liberal education. Conflicting streams of thought flow through American intellectual history: W. E. B. DuBois’s humanistic principles of pedagogy for newly emancipated slaves developed in opposition to Booker T. Washington’s educational utilitarianism, for example. Jane Addams’s emphasis on the cultivation of empathy and John Dewey’s calls for education as civic engagement were rejected as impractical by those who aimed to train students for particular economic tasks. Roth explores these arguments (and more), considers the state of higher education today, and concludes with a stirring plea for the kind of education that has, since the founding of the nation, cultivated individual freedom, promulgated civic virtue, and instilled hope for the future. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Let's Be Reasonable Jonathan Marks, 2023-01-31 A conservative college professor's compelling defense of liberal education Not so long ago, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. believed universities were worth fighting for. Today, conservatives seem more inclined to burn them down. In Let's Be Reasonable, conservative political theorist and professor Jonathan Marks finds in liberal education an antidote to this despair, arguing that the true purpose of college is to encourage people to be reasonable—and revealing why the health of our democracy is at stake. Drawing on the ideas of John Locke and other thinkers, Marks presents the case for why, now more than ever, conservatives must not give up on higher education. He recognizes that professors and administrators frequently adopt the language and priorities of the left, but he explains why conservative nightmare visions of liberal persecution and indoctrination bear little resemblance to what actually goes on in college classrooms. Marks examines why advocates for liberal education struggle to offer a coherent defense of themselves against their conservative critics, and demonstrates why such a defense must rest on the cultivation of reason and of pride in being reasonable. More than just a campus battlefield guide, Let's Be Reasonable recovers what is truly liberal about liberal education—the ability to reason for oneself and with others—and shows why the liberally educated person considers reason to be more than just a tool for scoring political points. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Liberal Education and the Idea of the University Karim Dharamsi, James Zimmer, 2019-04-02 The idea of the university and the idea of liberal education share a family resemblance. However, it is not always explicitly clear what they have in common and what differentiates them. This collection brings together arguments and reflections on the nature of the university and the place of liberal learning in the 21st century. It is divided into two parts. In the first part authors examine the values and ideals that shape our understanding of liberal learning and the university; in the second part authors consider pedagogies informing our practices, asking after what underlying presuppositions, when made explicit, guide our liberal education classrooms in higher education. Unique in its approaches, this volume includes defenses of liberal education’s intrinsic value, the commodification of some of its best ideals, as well as utilitarian defenses that challenge some orthodox conceptions of liberal learning and its justifications. Each in its own right understands liberal learning as essential to the defense of a democratic order. On the pedagogical side, included are essays that defend a view of liberal education from the vantage of STEM subjects, including architecture, as well as those we typically associate with the liberal arts. This volume will aid academics and students seeking to better grasp an understanding of liberal education, but also those seeking to advance their pedagogical ideas about liberal learning. Researchers and students in education, higher education and those interested in the liberal arts and sciences will find this volume a useful addition to their collection. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Leadership and the Liberal Arts J. Wren, R. Riggio, 2009-03-30 A collection of essays by presidents of prominent liberal arts colleges and leading intellectuals who reflect on the meaning of educating individuals for leadership and how it can be accomplished in ways consistent with the missions of liberal arts institutions. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Rescuing Socrates Roosevelt Montas, 2023-03-21 A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life—and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities. Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education—and why it can still remake lives. |
| in defense of a liberal education: You Can Do Anything George Anders, 2017-08-08 In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts. Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In You Can Do Anything, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why telling your story is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Why Choose the Liberal Arts? Mark William Roche, 2010-08-20 In a world where the value of a liberal arts education is no longer taken for granted, Mark William Roche lucidly and passionately argues for its essential importance. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience in higher education as a student, faculty member, and administrator, Roche deftly connects the broad theoretical perspective of educators to the practical needs and questions of students and their parents. Roche develops three overlapping arguments for a strong liberal arts education: first, the intrinsic value of learning for its own sake, including exploration of the profound questions that give meaning to life; second, the cultivation of intellectual virtues necessary for success beyond the academy; and third, the formative influence of the liberal arts on character and on the development of a sense of higher purpose and vocation. Together with his exploration of these three values—intrinsic, practical, and idealistic—Roche reflects on ways to integrate them, interweaving empirical data with personal experience. Why Choose the Liberal Arts? is an accessible and thought-provoking work of interest to students, parents, and administrators. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Idealism and Liberal Education James O. Freedman, 2001-01-19 An eloquent tribute to the value of the liberal education |
| in defense of a liberal education: Human Dignity, Education, and Political Society James Greenaway, 2020-07-07 A life of liberty and responsibility does not just happen, but requires a particular kind of education, one that aims at both a growth of the human soul and an enrichment of political society in justice and the common good. This we call a liberal education. Forgetfulness of liberty is also a forgetfulness of the multi-dimensional nature of the human person, and a diminution of political life. Keeping in mind what can be lost when liberal education is lost, this volume makes the case for recovering what is perennially noble and good in the liberal arts, and why the liberal arts always have a role to play in human flourishing. Each of the authors herein focuses on the connection of three primary themes: human dignity, liberal education, and political society. Intentionally rooted in the hub that joins the three themes, each author seeks to unfold the contemporary significance of that hub. As a whole, the volume explores how the three themes are crucial to each other: how they illuminate each other, how they need each other, and how the loss of one jeopardizes the wellbeing of the others. In individual chapters, the authors engage various relevant aspects of liberal education. As a result, the volume is organized into three parts: Liberal Education and a Life Well Lived; Thinkers on Dignity and Education in History; Contemporary Topics in Dignity and Education. As education is increasingly channeled into an ever more narrow focus on technical specialization, and measured against professional success, students themselves face a maelstrom of campus politics and competing political orthodoxies. These are among the issues that tend to militate against the operative liberty of the student to think and to speak as a person. This edited collection is offered as an invitation to think again about the liberal arts in order to recover the meaning of education as the authentic pursuit of the good life or eudemonia. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Why Teach? Mark Edmundson, 2014-08-12 Presents a collection of essays that explore a college education as a means through which serious-minded individuals broaden their minds and acquire life skills, arguing that higher learning is an essential remedy for today's problems. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Escape from Scepticism Christopher Derrick, 2010-09-07 The brilliant English writer Christopher Derrick presents a disturbing indictment of today's colleges and universities and the troubled condition of liberal education. The occasion for his writing this book was a visit to Thomas Aquinas College in California which deeply impressed Derrick with its true liberal and Catholic education. This small independent college convinced him of the need for reform in Catholic higher education today, and he uses the example of this college as the way this reform should be carried out. This book is comparable to Newman's Idea of a University. Derrick has wit and a brilliant aphoristic style. This book could well serve as a manual for the reform of Catholic higher education today. -Paul Hallet, The National Catholic Register |
| in defense of a liberal education: Stairway to College Heaven Victoria Tillson Evans, Jonathan Perkins, Phil Sung, 2018-04-19 The college planning and application process is not an impenetrable mystery. The sooner you understand how it works, the sooner you can empower your child to make informed college decisions. Stop procrastinating!This book tells the story of Michelle, a determined mom who will stop at nothing to ensure that her son, Jack, has plenty of choices for college. When Jack announces he needs to start thinking about college, Michelle panics -- but only for a moment. Stairway to College Heaven traces Michelle's journey from confusion to confidence. Led by three enthusiastic, nacho-loving guides, Michelle discovers the obstacles that lurk ahead and finds the strategies to overcome them.Victoria Tillson Evans, Jonathan Perkins, and Phil Sung, have teamed up to bring you a wealth of practical advice about your family's college journey. Victoria earned her BA from Johns Hopkins University and her AM and PhD from Harvard University; she runs Distinctive College Consulting in Bethesda, Maryland. Jon earned his BA from Stanford University and his JD from Harvard Law School; he offers college counseling services through Essaywise in Palos Verdes Estates, California. Phil earned his BA from Stanford; he provides college counseling and ACT/SAT test prep services through Essaywise in Palo Alto, California. The Stairway to College Heaven awaits. Are you ready to take the first step? |
| in defense of a liberal education: In Defense of Disciplines Jerry A. Jacobs, 2014-02-05 Calls for closer connections among disciplines can be heard throughout the world of scholarly research, from major universities to the National Institutes of Health. In Defense of Disciplines presents a fresh and daring analysis of the argument surrounding interdisciplinarity. Challenging the belief that blurring the boundaries between traditional academic fields promotes more integrated research and effective teaching, Jerry Jacobs contends that the promise of interdisciplinarity is illusory and that critiques of established disciplines are often overstated and misplaced. Drawing on diverse sources of data, Jacobs offers a new theory of liberal arts disciplines such as biology, economics, and history that identifies the organizational sources of their dynamism and breadth. Illustrating his thesis with a wide range of case studies including the diffusion of ideas between fields, the creation of interdisciplinary scholarly journals, and the rise of new fields that spin off from existing ones, Jacobs turns many of the criticisms of disciplines on their heads to mount a powerful defense of the enduring value of liberal arts disciplines. This will become one of the anchors of the case against interdisciplinarity for years to come. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Liberal Arts at the Brink Victor E. Ferrall Jr., 2011-03-15 Liberal arts colleges represent a tiny portion of the higher education market—no more than 2 percent of enrollees. Yet they produce a stunningly large percentage of America’s leaders in virtually every field of endeavor. The educational experience they offer—small classes led by professors devoted to teaching and mentoring, in a community dedicated to learning—has been a uniquely American higher education ideal. Liberal Arts at the Brink is a wake-up call for everyone who values liberal arts education. A former college president trained in law and economics, Ferrall shows how a spiraling demand for career-related education has pressured liberal arts colleges to become vocational, distorting their mission and core values. The relentless competition among them to attract the “best” students has driven down tuition revenues while driving up operating expenses to levels the colleges cannot cover. The weakest are being forced to sell out to vocational for-profit universities or close their doors. The handful of wealthy elite colleges risk becoming mere dispensers of employment and professional school credentials. The rest face the prospect of moving away from liberal arts and toward vocational education in order to survive. Writing in a personable, witty style, Ferrall tackles the host of threats and challenges liberal arts colleges now confront. Despite these daunting realities, he makes a spirited case for the unique benefits of the education they offer—to students and the nation. He urges liberal arts colleges to stop going it alone and instead band together to promote their mission and ensure their future. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs Richard A. Detweiler, 2021-11-23 Empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education: how and why it has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment. In ongoing debates over the value of a college education, the role of the liberal arts in higher education has been blamed by some for making college expensive, impractical, and even worthless. Defenders argue that liberal arts education makes society innovative, creative, and civic-minded. But these qualities are hard to quantify, and many critics of higher education call for courses of study to be strictly job-specific. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Detweiler, drawing on interviews with more than 1,000 college graduates aged 25 to 65, offers empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education. Detweiler finds that a liberal arts education has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment over a lifetime. Unlike other defenders of a liberal arts education, Detweiler doesn’t rely on philosophical arguments or anecdotes but on data. He developed a series of interview questions related to the content attributes of liberal arts (for example, course assignments and majors), the context attributes (out-of-class interaction with faculty and students, teaching methods, campus life), and the purpose attributes (adult life outcomes). Interview responses show that although both the content of study and the educational context are associated with significant life outcomes, the content of study has less relationship to positive adult life outcomes than the educational context. The implications of this research, Detweiler points out, range from the advantages of broadening areas of study to factors that could influence students’ decisions to attend certain colleges. |
| in defense of a liberal education: College Andrew Delbanco, 2023-04-18 The strengths and failures of the American college, and why liberal education still matters As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In describing what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America's democratic promise. In a brisk and vivid historical narrative, Delbanco explains how the idea of college arose in the colonial period from the Puritan idea of the gathered church, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, and how, in the twentieth century, it slowly opened its doors to women, minorities, and students from low-income families. He describes the unique strengths of America’s colleges in our era of globalization and, while recognizing the growing centrality of science, technology, and vocational subjects in the curriculum, he mounts a vigorous defense of a broadly humanistic education for all. Acknowledging the serious financial, intellectual, and ethical challenges that all colleges face today, Delbanco considers what is at stake in the urgent effort to protect these venerable institutions for future generations. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Not for Profit Martha C. Nussbaum, 2024-12-03 A passionate defense of the humanities from one of today's foremost public intellectuals In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad. We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. Translated into twenty-five languages, Not for Profit draws on the stories of troubling—and hopeful—global educational developments. Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Excellent Sheep William Deresiewicz, 2014-08-19 A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People). As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively and how to find a sense of purpose. Now he argues that elite colleges are turning out conformists without a compass. Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz, that college be a time for self-discovery when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it. “Excellent Sheep is likely to make…a lasting mark….He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America….Mr. Deresiewicz’s book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness” (The New York Times). |
| in defense of a liberal education: Observations Upon Liberal Education George Turnbull, 2003 Observations upon Liberal Education, the first modern edition, arose from a longing for a liberty of mind and tried to lay the groundwork for a society of free, virtuous, and educated citizens. The work's influence was by no means confined to Scotland. Benjamin Franklin drew generously from the work of Turnbull. The Liberty Fund edition of Observations upon Liberal Education is the first modern edition of this work ever published. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The 10 Rules of Successful Nations Ruchir Sharma, 2020-03-31 The 10 Rules of Successful Nations offers a pithy guide to real-world economics, adapted from the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of Nations. A wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, The 10 Rules of Successful Nations is a slim primer full of pioneering insights on the political, economic, and social habits of successful nations. Distilled from Sharma’s quarter century traveling the world as a writer and investor, his rules challenge conventional textbook thinking on what matters—and what doesn’t—for a strong economy. He shows why successful nations embrace robots and immigrants, prefer democratic leaders to autocrats, elect charismatic reformers over technocrats, and pay no mind to the debate about big versus small government. He explains why rising stock prices matter as much or more than food prices, which measure of debt is the best predictor of economic crises, and why no one number can accurately capture the value of a currency. He also demonstrates how a close reading of the Forbes billionaire lists can offer the clearest real-time warning of populist revolts against the wealthy. Updated with brand-new data, 10 Rules reimagines economics as a practical art, giving general readers as well as political and business leaders a quick guide to the most important forces that shape a nation’s future. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Building a Life of Value Jason A. Merchey, 2005 How Do Your Build a Meaningful Life? More than just a book of quotations, this book is a fusion of great thinking from classical to contemporary, from philosophical to poetic. It is a concert of voices, harmoniously blended by Jason Merchey and his thought-provoking essays. It will stimulate your thinking, energize your spirit, and deepen your understanding of human nature. It presents progressive ideals at their best - humane, humanistic, and high-minded. Consider it your shaman, your oracle, your foundation, your blueprint for truly building a life of value. With these ideas we can improve ourselves, our planet, and our future. |
| in defense of a liberal education: In Defense of Elitism Joel Stein, 2019-10-22 From Thurber finalist and former star Time columnist Joel Stein comes a brilliant exploration (Walter Isaacson) of America's political culture war and a hilarious call to arms for the elite. I can think of no one more suited to defend elitism than Stein, a funny man with hands as delicate as a baby full of soft-boiled eggs. —Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The night Donald Trump won the presidency, our author Joel Stein, Thurber Prize finalist and former staff writer for Time Magazine, instantly knew why. The main reason wasn't economic anxiety or racism. It was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they're better than you. People like Joel Stein. Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein. In a full-throated defense of academia, the mainstream press, medium-rare steak, and civility, Joel Stein fights against populism. He fears a new tribal elite is coming to replace him, one that will fend off expertise of all kinds and send the country hurtling backward to a time of wars, economic stagnation and the well-done steaks doused with ketchup that Trump eats. To find out how this shift happened and what can be done, Stein spends a week in Roberts County, Texas, which had the highest percentage of Trump voters in the country. He goes to the home of Trump-loving Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams; meets people who create fake news; and finds the new elitist organizations merging both right and left to fight the populists. All the while using the biggest words he knows. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Quest for Excellence Dustin Gish, Chris Constas, J. Scott Lee, 2016-08-25 Liberal education aspires to excellence through the cultivation of free human beings who excel in thought, word, and deed. But what exactly is excellence, and why do we admire it? How do we conceive of what is excellent? What constitutes excellence—either for human beings, or in the realms of philosophy, literature, science, and politics? Why is excellence an aim of liberal education? What kinds of texts, courses, and inquiries contribute to achieving this end? Such questions animate the studies herein. The essays in this volume reflect on the idea of excellence embedded within core texts, as well as how such texts influence and ennoble higher education. In its chapters, we consider rival forms of excellence from ancient Greece and Rome, through modern Europe and America, and beyond. The world of antiquity and its accounts of excellence, as represented in the works of Euripides, Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, and Cicero, are here brought into dialogue with diverse modern perspectives on excellence, as articulated by Shakespeare, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Austen, Darwin, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Nietzsche, as well as (more recently) by John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Cardinal Newman, and Eboo Patel. Our desire to seek and understand excellence transcends borders, and the purpose of this volume is to help perpetuate in contemporary higher education the study of core texts essential to the cultivation of excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Mama's Nightingale Edwidge Danticat, 2015-09-01 A touching tale of parent-child separation and immigration, from a National Book Award finalist After Saya's mother is sent to an immigration detention center, Saya finds comfort in listening to her mother's warm greeting on their answering machine. To ease the distance between them while she’s in jail, Mama begins sending Saya bedtime stories inspired by Haitian folklore on cassette tape. Moved by her mother's tales and her father's attempts to reunite their family, Saya writes a story of her own—one that just might bring her mother home for good. With stirring illustrations, this tender tale shows the human side of immigration and imprisonment—and shows how every child has the power to make a difference. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Why School? Mike Rose, 2014-02-04 Why School? is a little book driven by big questions. What does it mean to be educated? What is intelligence? How should we think about intelligence, education, and opportunity in an open society? Drawing on forty years of teaching and research and a profound understanding of the opportunities, both intellectual and economic, that come from education (Booklist), award-winning author Mike Rose reflects on these and other questions related to public schooling in America. He answers them in beautifully written chapters that are both rich in detail and informed by an extensive knowledge of history, the psychology of learning, and the politics of education. This paperback edition includes three new chapters showing how cognitive science actually narrows our understanding of learning, how to increase college graduation rates, and how to value the teaching of basic skills. An updated introduction by Rose, who has been hailed as a superb writer and an even better storyteller (TLN Teachers Network), reflects on recent developments in school reform. Lauded as a beautifully written work of literary nonfiction (The Christian Science Monitor) and called stunning by the New Educator Journal, Why School? offers an eloquent call for a bountiful democratic vision of the purpose of schooling. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Evolution of Liberal Arts in the Global Age Peter Marber, Daniel Araya, 2017-03-16 Advanced and developing countries across the globe are embracing the liberal arts approach in higher education to foster more innovative human capital to compete in the global economy. Even as interest in the tradition expands outside the United States, can the democratic philosophy underlying the liberal arts tradition be sustained? Can developing countries operating under heavy authoritarian systems cultivate schools predicated on open discussion and debate? Can entrenched specialist systems in Europe and Asia successfully adopt the multidisciplinary liberal arts model? These are some of the questions put to leading scholars and senior higher education practitioners within this edited collection. Beginning with historical context, international contributors explore the contours of liberal arts education amid public calls for change in the United States, the growing global interest in the approach outside the United States, as well as the potential of liberal arts philosophy in a global knowledge economy. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Freedom and Its Betrayal Isaiah Berlin, 2014-05-25 These celebrated lectures constitute one of Isaiah Berlin's most concise, accessible, and convincing presentations of his views on human freedom—views that later found expression in such famous works as Two Concepts of Liberty and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. When they were broadcast on BBC radio in 1952, the lectures created a sensation and confirmed Berlin’s reputation as an intellectual who could speak to the public in an appealing and compelling way. A recording of only one of the lectures has survived, but Henry Hardy has recreated them all here from BBC transcripts and Berlin’s annotated drafts. Hardy has also added, as an appendix to this new edition, a revealing text of Two Concepts based on Berlin’s earliest surviving drafts, which throws light on some of the issues raised by the essay. And, in a new foreword, historian Enrique Krauze traces the origin of Berlin’s idea of negative freedom to his rejection of the notion that the creation of the State of Israel left Jews with only two choices: to emigrate to Israel or to renounce Jewish identity. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Experimental College Alexander Meiklejohn, 1928 |
| in defense of a liberal education: The New Education Cathy N. Davidson, 2017-09-05 A leading educational thinker argues that the American university is stuck in the past -- and shows how we can revolutionize it for our era of constant change Our current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925. It was in those decades that the nation's new universities created grades and departments, majors and minors, all in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T. As Cathy N. Davidson argues in The New Education, this approach to education is wholly unsuited to the era of the gig economy. From the Ivy League to community colleges, she introduces us to innovators who are remaking college for our own time by emphasizing student-centered learning that values creativity in the face of change above all. The New Education ultimately shows how we can teach students not only to survive but to thrive amid the challenges to come. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Nancy W. Gleason, 2018-06-21 This open access collection examines how higher education responds to the demands of the automation economy and the fourth industrial revolution. Considering significant trends in how people are learning, coupled with the ways in which different higher education institutions and education stakeholders are implementing adaptations, it looks at new programs and technological advances that are changing how and why we teach and learn. The book addresses trends in liberal arts integration of STEM innovations, the changing role of libraries in the digital age, global trends in youth mobility, and the development of lifelong learning programs. This is coupled with case study assessments of the various ways China, Singapore, South Africa and Costa Rica are preparing their populations for significant shifts in labour market demands – shifts that are already underway. Offering examples of new frameworks in which collaboration between government, industry, and higher education institutions can prevent lagging behind in this fast changing environment, this book is a key read for anyone wanting to understand how the world should respond to the radical technological shifts underway on the frontline of higher education. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Uses of a Liberal Education Brand Blanshard, 1951 |
| in defense of a liberal education: Free Speech and Liberal Education Cato Institute, 2020-02-07 Free Speech and Liberal Education examines the empirical, philosophical, and remedial dimensions of the battle over free speech and academic freedom in American higher education today. |
| in defense of a liberal education: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition) Fareed Zakaria, 2007-10-17 “A work of tremendous originality and insight. ... Makes you see the world differently.”—Washington Post Translated into twenty languages ?The Future of Freedom ?is a modern classic that uses historical analysis to shed light on the present, examining how democracy has changed our politics, economies, and social relations. Prescient in laying out the distinction between democracy and liberty, the book contains a new afterword on the United States's occupation of Iraq and a wide-ranging update of the book's themes. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World Fareed Zakaria, 2020-10-06 New York Times Bestseller COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come? Lenin once said, There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen. This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten lessons, covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of digital life to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century. |
| in defense of a liberal education: Virtue Politics James Hankins, 2019-12-17 Winner of the Helen and Howard Marraro Prize A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year “Perhaps the greatest study ever written of Renaissance political thought.” —Jeffrey Collins, Times Literary Supplement “Magisterial...Hankins shows that the humanists’ obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power.” —Wall Street Journal “Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way...For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be...nothing less than transformative.” —Noel Malcolm, American Affairs “[A] masterpiece...It is only Hankins’s tireless exploration of forgotten documents...and extraordinary endeavors of editing, translation, and exposition that allow us to reconstruct—almost for the first time in 550 years—[the humanists’] three compelling arguments for why a strong moral character and habits of truth are vital for governing well. Yet they are as relevant to contemporary democracy in Britain, and in the United States, as to Machiavelli.” —Rory Stewart, Times Literary Supplement “The lessons for today are clear and profound.” —Robert D. Kaplan Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; religious leaders preoccupied with self-advancement while feuding armies waged endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. “Men, not walls, make a city,” as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild the fabric of society by transforming the moral character of its citizens. Soulcraft, they believed, was a precondition of successful statecraft. A landmark reappraisal of Renaissance political thought, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker. James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than laws, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the precursor to our embattled humanities. |
In defense of a liberal education - Springer
compelling one in defence of a liberal education. And it is precisely in highlighting the class-based politics of the attack on the liberal arts that this volume comes up short, save for a small …
Martha Nussbaum and Liberal Education - DiVA
A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Like the for-mer books it is replete with references to classical philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle and Seneca, but it is also …
In Defence of Liberal Education - JSTOR
foregrounds a utilitarian strain that has made it difficult for liberal education to make a case for itself. This is true of most other countries as well. It is important to remember that it was only …
What Good Is a Liberal Education? - JSTOR
of the more familiar defenses of liberal education. After reviewing three rationales for undergraduate liberal education, I will turn to what I consider the real justifi cation for the …
In Defense Of A Liberal Education - mrl.org
The traditional defense of liberal education as the appropriate Liberal Education and Effective Action - JSTOR WebLiberal education has enjoyed a long history and is highly revered by …
FAREED ZAKARIA. In Defense of a Liberal Education. New York
tion of liberal education, Zakaria’s focus on Chapter 3 shifts to some of the strengths of a liberal arts education. For Zakaria, liberal arts degrees do more than equipping persons to think. …
Applied Liberal Education: Making the Case or Muddying the …
professional and liberal education is what Martin means by applied liberal educa-tion. In my selective summary of Martin’s argument, my aim has been to highlight a certain taxonomical …
Liberal Learning as Freedom: A Capabilities Approach to ... - Springer
Nussbaum’s philosophy of liberal education (1997), the capability approach to human development articulated by Sen (1992, 1999) and Nussbaum (1992, 2000), and consensus …
W(h)ither Liberal Education? A Modest Defense of Humanistic …
The traditional liberal arts have been losing their voice over the last 20 years among the reform elites who shape public discourse and policy making about education. Liberal arts advocates …
A Historical and Global Perspective on Liberal Arts Education
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997);—, “Liberal Education & Global Community,” Liberal …
Hadi Nur — Born in 1969. Online since 1999.
%PDF-1.4 %Ãì¦" % Created by calibre 3.25.0 [https://calibre-ebook.com] 4 0 obj /Height 728 /DL 58174 /Width 500 /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Length 58174 ...
Making the Case for Liberal Education - University of California, …
liberal education with liberal or left-leaning politics isn’t as widespread among students as might be imagined. We also found that students associate the term with the general education …
Book Review: IN DEFENSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION - Neliti
how to think analytically. In Defense of a “ Liberal Education serves as a reminder to us of ” the importance of the free pursuit of knowledge, for the sake of knowledge. Zakaria also cites a …
Education and the Identities of Liberalism
Philosophical Inquiry in Education, Volume 27 (2020), No. 2, pp. 174-180 Education and the Identities of Liberalism ... within liberal societies in general, and for education in particular. She …
Liberal Education and the Idea of the University
Chapter 6 A Conservative Defense of Liberal Education 85 James Cunningham Independent Scholar Chapter 7 The Civic Benefits of the Trivium 103 Jeff Shires Purdue University …
Political liberalism and autonomy education: Are citizenship
politically liberal citizenship education, which focuses on the development of students into good deliberative citizens, license a regime of autonomy education that ... My defense of autonomy …
In Defense of Liberal Education - JSTOR
In Defense of Liberal Education Cass R. Sunstein In my law school classes in my first year, the shortest measurement of time was the interval between the teacher's asking another student a …
A Liberal Education - Cambridge University Press & Assessment
challenges that education faces in those contexts. Books in the series The Comparative Politics of Education: Teachers Unions and Education Systems around the World Edited by Terry M. …
A Defense of Religion in Liberal Arts Education - JSTOR
A Defense of Religion in Liberal Arts Education TROY ORGAN HERE are no doubt many sound ecclesiastical reasons for offering courses in religion in a liberal arts college, but a college …
In Defense of a Liberal Education - WordPress.com
What you are not supposed to do is study the liberal arts. Around the world, the idea of a broad-based “liberal” education is closely tied to the United States and its great universities and …
In defense of a liberal education - Springer
compelling one in defence of a liberal education. And it is precisely in highlighting the class-based politics of the attack on the liberal arts that this volume comes up short, save for a small section …
Martha Nussbaum and Liberal Education - DiVA
A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Like the for-mer books it is replete with references to classical philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle and Seneca, but it is also based …
In Defence of Liberal Education - JSTOR
foregrounds a utilitarian strain that has made it difficult for liberal education to make a case for itself. This is true of most other countries as well. It is important to remember that it was only …
What Good Is a Liberal Education? - JSTOR
of the more familiar defenses of liberal education. After reviewing three rationales for undergraduate liberal education, I will turn to what I consider the real justifi cation for the study …
In Defense Of A Liberal Education - mrl.org
The traditional defense of liberal education as the appropriate Liberal Education and Effective Action - JSTOR WebLiberal education has enjoyed a long history and is highly revered by higher …
FAREED ZAKARIA. In Defense of a Liberal Education. New York …
tion of liberal education, Zakaria’s focus on Chapter 3 shifts to some of the strengths of a liberal arts education. For Zakaria, liberal arts degrees do more than equipping persons to think. Their …
Applied Liberal Education: Making the Case or Muddying the …
professional and liberal education is what Martin means by applied liberal educa-tion. In my selective summary of Martin’s argument, my aim has been to highlight a certain taxonomical …
Liberal Learning as Freedom: A Capabilities Approach to ... - Springer
Nussbaum’s philosophy of liberal education (1997), the capability approach to human development articulated by Sen (1992, 1999) and Nussbaum (1992, 2000), and consensus definitions of …
W(h)ither Liberal Education? A Modest Defense of Humanistic …
The traditional liberal arts have been losing their voice over the last 20 years among the reform elites who shape public discourse and policy making about education. Liberal arts advocates …
A Historical and Global Perspective on Liberal Arts Education
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997);—, “Liberal Education & Global Community,” Liberal Education, no. 90 …
Hadi Nur — Born in 1969. Online since 1999.
%PDF-1.4 %Ãì¦" % Created by calibre 3.25.0 [https://calibre-ebook.com] 4 0 obj /Height 728 /DL 58174 /Width 500 /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Length 58174 ...
Making the Case for Liberal Education - University of California, …
liberal education with liberal or left-leaning politics isn’t as widespread among students as might be imagined. We also found that students associate the term with the general education component …
Book Review: IN DEFENSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION - Neliti
how to think analytically. In Defense of a “ Liberal Education serves as a reminder to us of ” the importance of the free pursuit of knowledge, for the sake of knowledge. Zakaria also cites a …
Education and the Identities of Liberalism
Philosophical Inquiry in Education, Volume 27 (2020), No. 2, pp. 174-180 Education and the Identities of Liberalism ... within liberal societies in general, and for education in particular. She …
Liberal Education and the Idea of the University
Chapter 6 A Conservative Defense of Liberal Education 85 James Cunningham Independent Scholar Chapter 7 The Civic Benefits of the Trivium 103 Jeff Shires Purdue University Northwest Chapter …
Political liberalism and autonomy education: Are citizenship
politically liberal citizenship education, which focuses on the development of students into good deliberative citizens, license a regime of autonomy education that ... My defense of autonomy …
In Defense of Liberal Education - JSTOR
In Defense of Liberal Education Cass R. Sunstein In my law school classes in my first year, the shortest measurement of time was the interval between the teacher's asking another student a …
A Liberal Education - Cambridge University Press & Assessment
challenges that education faces in those contexts. Books in the series The Comparative Politics of Education: Teachers Unions and Education Systems around the World Edited by Terry M. Moe …
A Defense of Religion in Liberal Arts Education - JSTOR
A Defense of Religion in Liberal Arts Education TROY ORGAN HERE are no doubt many sound ecclesiastical reasons for offering courses in religion in a liberal arts college, but a college should …
