From benjamin franklin to the Internet pundits, critics of higher education have attacked its irrelevance and elitism—often calling for more vocational instruction. In this provocative contribution to the disputes, university president Michael S. B. E. Roth focuses on important moments and seminal thinkers in America’s long-running argument over vocational vs.
Conflicting streams of thought flow through American intellectual history: W. Contentious debates over the benefits—or drawbacks—of a liberal education are as old as America itself. Dubois’s humanistic principles of pedagogy for newly emancipated slaves developed in opposition to Booker T. 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.
In Defense of a Liberal Education
While at a general electric plant in early 2014, "I promise you, potentially, folks can make a lot more, Obama remarked, 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. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history. Engineering is a great profession, more than anything, lateral thinking, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, communication, storytelling, and, design, 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. 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.
Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities - Updated Edition The Public Square Book 21
In a new preface, nussbaum explores the current state of humanistic education globally and shows why the crisis of the humanities has far from abated. Translated into over twenty languages, Not for Profit draws on the stories of troubling—and hopeful—global educational developments. But recently, nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad.
. 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. 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.
In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. 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.
Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.
Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. Deresiewicz’s book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness” The New York Times.
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. It is essential, that college be a time for self-discovery, says Deresiewicz, when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths.
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. 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.
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Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
In farsighted, he uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. They're the novelists who draw out the complexity of their characters' inner lives, the city officials who secure long-term water supplies, and the scientists who reckon with future challenges most of us haven't even imagined.
There's no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums. The hardest choices are also the most consequential. While you can't model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers. Their success relies on having a future-oriented approach and the ability to consider all their options in a creative, productive way.
The smartest decision-makers don't go with their guts. Farsighted will help you imagine your possible futures and appreciate the subtle intelligence of the choices that shaped our broader social history. These experts aren't just the master strategists running major companies or negotiating high-level diplomacy.
Through compelling stories that reveal surprising insights, an organization, Johnson explains how we can most effectively approach the choices that can chart the course of a life, or a civilization.
Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Beneath all our inventions -- our tools, cities, farms, machines, nations -- we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, cooperation, friendship, including our capacity for love, and learning. In blueprint, Nicholas A.
But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilization, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies have shaped, and are still shaping, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, our genes today. A dazzlingly erudite synthesis of history, philosophy, epidemiology, New York Times, anthropology, economics, and more" Frank Bruni, sociology, genetics, statistics, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path -- and how we are united by our common humanity.
For too long, prejudice, cruelty, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, and self-interest. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide.
In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past.
A Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees
The liberal arts major is often lampooned: lacking in "skills, " unqualified for a professional career, underemployed. Drawing on the experiences of stanford university graduates and using the students' own accounts of their education, job searches, and first work experiences, Randall Stross provides heartening demonstrations of how multi-capable liberal arts graduates are.
. Just look to silicon valley, of all places, to see that liberal arts majors can succeed not in spite of, but because of, their education. A practical education investigates the real-world experiences of graduates with humanities majors, the majors that would seem the least employable in Silicon Valley's engineering-centric workplaces.
But studying for the joy of learning turns out to be surprisingly practical. When given a first opportunity, these majors thrive in work roles that no one would have predicted. Stross also weaves the students' stories with the history of Stanford, the birth of occupational testing, the longstanding contention between engineering and the liberal arts, the rise of professional schools, and the popularity of computer science education to trace the evolution in thinking about how to prepare students for professional futures.
Unlike career-focused education, college career center professionals, their even more nervous parents, liberal education prepares graduates for anything and everything—and nervous "fuzzy major" students, and prospective employers would do well to embrace liberal arts majors.
The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World
If you majored in computer or hard sciences, you were a techie. While silicon valley is generally considered a techie stronghold, LinkedIn, PayPal, the founders of companies like Airbnb, Reddit, and others are all fuzzies—in other words, Pinterest, Stitch Fix, Slack, people with backgrounds in the liberal arts.
They offer a human touch that is of equal—if not greater—importance in our technology-led world than what most techies can provide. If you majored in humanities or social sciences, you were a fuzzy. Fuzzies are the instrumental stewards of robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. In this brilliantly counterintuitive book, Hartley shatters assumptions about business and education today: learning to code is not enough.
For anyone doubting whether a well-rounded liberal arts education is practical in today’s world, Hartley’s work will come as an inspiring revelation. Finalist for the 2016 financial times/McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize A Financial Times Business Book of the Month.
Updated Edition The William G. Bowen Series Book 82 - College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be
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 a new afterword, delbanco responds to recent developments—both ominous and promising—in the changing landscape of higher education.
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, in the twentieth century, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, minorities, and how, it slowly opened its doors to women, and students from low-income families.
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.
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The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis--and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance
The statistics are daunting: 30% of college students drop out after the first year, and only 4 in 10 graduate. A call to arms, the vanishing american Adult will ignite a much-needed debate about the link between the way we're raising our children and the future of our country. From these disparate phenomena: nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life.
In the vanishing american adult, sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. The instant new york times bestsellerin an era of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and an unprecedented election, the country's youth are in crisis.
Senator ben sasse warns the nation about the existential threat to America's future. Raised by well-meaning but overprotective parents and coddled by well-meaning but misbegotten government programs, America's youth are ill-equipped to survive in our highly-competitive global economy. Many of the coming-of-age rituals that have defined the American experience since the Founding: learning the value of working with your hands, leaving home to start a family, becoming economically self-reliant—are being delayed or skipped altogether.
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You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education
Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. 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.
At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. 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.
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 be ready for anything. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales.