Description
Book SynopsisThe liberal arts are dying. They are dying because most Americans don’t see the point of them. Americans don’t understand why anyone would study literature or history or the classics—or, more contemporarily, feminist criticism, whiteness studies, or the literature of postcolonial states—when they can get an engineering or business degree.
Even more concerning is when they read how “Western civilization” has become a term
of reproach at so many supposedly thoughtful institutions; or how fanatical political correctness works hard to silence alternative viewpoints; or, more generally, how liberal studies have become scattered, narrow, and small. In this atmosphere, it’s hard to convince parents or their progeny that a liberal education is all that wonderful or that it’s even worthy of respect.
Over sixty years ago, we were introduced to the idea of “the two cultures” in higher education— that is, the growing rift in the academy between the humanities and the sciences, a rift wherein neither side understood the other, spoke to the other, or cared for the other. But this divide in the academy, real as it may be, is nothing compared to another great divide—the rift today between our common American culture and the culture of the academy itself.
So, how can we rebuild the notion that a liberal education is truly of value, both to our students and to the nation? Our highest hopes may be not to “restore” the liberal arts to what they looked like fifty or a hundred years ago but to ask ourselves what a true contemporary American liberal education at its best might look like.
Remedying this situation will involve knowing clearly where we wish to go and then understanding how we might get there. For those objectives, this book is meant to be the beginning.
Trade Review“A timely breath of fresh thinking about the role of the liberal arts in higher education, and one that could not be more accessible or more clearly written. It is meant for all of us.” —Gordon S. Wood, Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus, Brown University
“John Agresto is an educator in the old-fashioned sense, which is also the highest and best sense. He recognizes that education is not, and must not be permitted to degenerate into, indoctrination. Nor is education merely a matter of providing students with information and imparting to them skills—as important as those aspects of education are. True education empowers and encourages students to ask questions, deep questions, fundamental questions of meaning, value, existence. The kind of education Agresto champions teaches students to be critical—and self-critical— thinkers. It immunizes them against ideology, dogmatism, and groupthink.” —Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
