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Gives an account of what colleges are doing in the name of the Humanities. Shows the reach of forces that have been responsible for the revival of an almost forgotten word of the Renaissance.
American Education, Democracy, and the Second World War examines how U.S. educational institutions during World War II responded to the dilemma of whether to serve as "weapons" in the nation s arsenal of democracy or "citadels" in safeguarding the American way of life. By studying the lives of wartime Americans, as well as nursery schools, elementary and secondary schools, and universities, Charles Dorn makes the case that although wartime pressures affected educational institutions to varying degrees, these institutions resisted efforts to be placed solely in service of the nation s war machine. Instead, Dorn argues, American education maintained a sturdy commitment to fostering civic mindedness in a society characterized by rapid technological advance and the perception of an ever-increasing threat to national security.
Many in higher education fear that the humanities are facing a crisis. But even if the rhetoric about “crisis” is overblown, humanities departments do face increasing pressure from administrators, politicians, parents, and students. In A New Deal for the Humanities, Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed bring together twelve prominent scholars who address the history, the present state, and the future direction of the humanities. These scholars keep the focus on public higher education, for it is in our state schools that the liberal arts are taught to the greatest numbers and where their neglect would be most damaging for the nation. The contributors offer spirited and thought-provoking debates on a diverse range of topics. For instance, they deplore the push by administrations to narrow learning into quantifiable outcomes as well as the demands of state governments for more practical, usable training. Indeed, for those who suggest that a college education should be “practical”—that it should lean toward the sciences and engineering, where the high-paying jobs are—this book points out that while a few nations produce as many technicians as the United States does, America is still renowned worldwide for its innovation and creativity, skills taught most effectively in the humanities. Most importantly, the essays in this collection examine ways to make the humanities even more effective, such as offering a broader array of options than the traditional major/minor scheme, options that combine a student’s professional and intellectual interests, like the new medical humanities programs. A democracy can only be as energetic as the minds of its citizens, and the questions fundamental to the humanities are also fundamental to a thoughtful life. A New Deal for the Humanities takes an intrepid step in making the humanities—and our citizens—even stronger in the future.
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.
This is an analysis of higher education in the past half century, a period of dramatic change and democratization. But it is more than that. The author has been a participant in the struggle to stem the decline in higher education, as it moved from an emphasis on classical liberal values toward relativism and ideological extremism. This volume reflects an awareness of what has been lost, but sees hope for a revival of traditional values as technological change and awareness of failure forces institutions to examine their premise. Herbert I. London has provided here fuel for fundamental redirection in American college and university affairs. Decline and Revival in Higher Education is uncompromising in its concerns, but points the way toward a future linked to the best of the past. The work follows the personal evolution of the author, while at the same time, describes the devolution of university standards in such institutions as Columbia, Duke, the University of California at Berkeley, and New York University. While seeing optimistic trends in oases of traditional programming that can serve as a counterweight to campus orthodoxies, London argues that the dramatic transformation of the academy cannot be denied. The social sciences and humanities in particular have become isolated from mainstream requirements in the nation. London deals with concrete concerns, such as the collapse of classic book programs in the contemporary curriculum, the decline and even vigilante raids on opposition in campus publications, the collapse of moral judgment in favor of pure relativism, the transformation of many museums into a storage houses of debris, and the confusion of coarse language with democratization. These developments lead the author to write this book, for if the culture wars are over, the American people may be the losers.
A report of the 1981 Wingspread Conference, which sought remedies for the current low state of the humanities in American higher education, is presented. Participants included 60 college presidents, deans, faculty members, government officials, and business and foundation officials. Recommendations are as follows: (1) a collaborative effort should be taken to develop articulation of the humanities curriculum from the elementary to postsecondary level; (2) colleges and universities should review the quality of teaching in humanities in the general education component, and should encourage collaboration across the disciplines and the integration of education in the humanities on their campuses; and (3) colleges and universities should review graduate education in the humanities to determine how it can better prepare young scholars in the humanities for teaching careers in the undergraduate classroom as well as for continued research activities. Conference participants agreed that the ultimate value of the humanities, beyond their intrinsic value as a form of knowledge, is in the development of practical wisdom in private life as well as in the conduct of thoughtful membership in democratic society. The humanities can also strengthen the quality of the public, professional, and intellectual life. Participants considered that the current difficulties of the humanities result, in part, from the vast changes in higher education during the past 20 years. They also discussed the isolation of the humanities, the needs of current humanities faculty, and the need for connections between the humanities and the sciences, social sciences, career disciplines, and other curricula. (SW)