The Future Of Liberal Education

Download or read book Redesigning Liberal Education written by William Moner and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voelker, Scott Windham, Mary C. Wright, Catherine Zeek

Download or read book The Future of Liberal Education written by Timothy W. Burns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal Education, once the whole of American Higher Education, has been displaced by technical training and career-oriented majors. But it has also suffered from the decline in genuine liberal learning found in humanities disciplines, owing to specialization, politicization, and the adoption of new literary and psychological theories. The social sciences, too, have arguably abandoned the kind of relentless and sometimes disturbing questioning that used to constitute the core of education. In this compelling volume, thirteen college educators describe in sparkling prose what liberal education is, its place in a liberal democracy, the very serious challenges it faces in the 21st century—even from some of its alleged friends—and why it is important to sustain and expand liberal education’s place in American colleges and universities. Proponents and critics of liberal education alike will benefit from these insightful essays. This book was originally published as a special issue of Perspectives on Political Science.

Download or read book In Defense of a Liberal Education written by Fareed Zakaria and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Beyond the University written by Michael S. Roth and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-28 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Politics of Liberal Education written by Darryl Gless and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century written by Robert E. Luckett Jr. and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-05-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by William D. Adams, Sarah Archino, Mario J. Azevedo, Katrina Byrd, Rico D. Chapman, Helen O. Chukwuma, Monica Flippin Wynn, Tatiana Glushko, Eric J. Griffin, Kathi R. Griffin, Yumi Park Huntington, Thomas M. Kersen, Robert E. Luckett Jr., Floyd W. Martin, Preselfannie W. McDaniels, Dawn Bishop McLin, Lauren Ashlee Messina, Byron D'Andra Orey, Kathy Root Pitts, Candis Pizzetta, Lawrence Sledge, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, Joseph Martin Stevenson, Seretha D. Williams, and Karen C. Wilson-Stevenson Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century delves into the essential nature of the liberal arts in America today. During a time when the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math dominate the narrative around the future of higher education, the liberal arts remain vital but frequently dismissed academic pursuits. While STEAM has emerged as a popular acronym, the arts get added to the discussion in a way that is often rhetorical at best. Written by scholars from a diversity of fields and institutions, the essays in this collection legitimize the liberal arts and offer visions for the role of these disciplines in the modern world. From the arts, pedagogy, and writing to social justice, the digital humanities, and the African American experience, the essays that comprise Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century bring attention to the vast array of ways in which the liberal arts continue to be fundamental parts of any education. In an increasingly transactional environment, in which students believe a degree must lead to a specific job and set income, colleges and universities should take heed of the advice from these scholars. The liberal arts do not lend themselves to the capacity to do a single job, but to do any job. The effective teaching of critical and analytical thinking, writing, and speaking creates educated citizens. In a divisive twenty-first-century world, such a citizenry holds the tools to maintain a free society, redefining the liberal arts in a manner that may be key to the American republic.

Download or read book Leadership and the Liberal Arts written by J. Wren and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.