Politics by Other Means
Title | Politics by Other Means PDF eBook |
Author | David Bromwich |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 284 |
Release | 1994-01-01 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 9780300059205 |
Liberal education has been under siege in recent years. Far-right ideologues in journalism and government have pressed for a uniform curriculum that focuses on the achievements of Western culture. Partisans of the academic left, who hold our culture responsible for the evils of society, have attempted to redress imbalances by fostering multiculturalism in education. In this eloquent and passionate book a distinguished scholar criticizes these positions and calls for a return to the tradition of independent thinking that he contends has been betrayed by both right and left. Under the guise of educational reform, says David Bromwich, these groups are in fact engaging in politics by other means. Bromwich argues that rivals in the debate over education have one thing in common: they believe in the all-importance of culture. Each assumes that culture confers identity, decides the terms of every moral choice, and gives a meaning to life. Both sides therefore see education as a means to indoctrinate students in specific cultural and political dogmas. By contrast, Bromwich contends that genuine education is concerned less with culture than with critical thinking and independence of mind. This view of education is not a middle way among the political demands of the moment, says Bromwich. Its earlier advocates include Mill and Wollstonecraft, and its roots can be traced to such secular moralists as Burke and Hume. Bromwich attacks the anti-democratic and intolerant premises of both right and left--premises that often appear in the conservative guise of "preserving the tradition" on the one hand, or the radical guise of "opening up the tradition" on the other. He discusses the new academic "fundamentalists" and the politically correct speech codes they have devised to enforce a doctrine of intellectual conformity; educational policy as articulated by conservative apologists George Will and William Bennett; the narrow logic of institutional radicalism; the association between personal reflection and social morality; and the discipline of literary study, where the symptoms of cultural conflict have appeared most visibly. Written with the wisdom and conviction of a dedicated teacher, this book is a persuasive plea to recover a true liberal tradition in academia and government--through independent thinking, self-knowledge, and tolerance of other points of view.
Higher Education Under Fire
Title | Higher Education Under Fire PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Bérubé |
Publisher | Psychology Press |
Pages | 392 |
Release | 1995 |
Genre | College teachers |
ISBN | 9780415908061 |
First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Reconstructing Foucault
Title | Reconstructing Foucault PDF eBook |
Author | Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso |
Publisher | Rodopi |
Pages | 336 |
Release | 1994 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9789051837100 |
The Great Canon Controversy
Title | The Great Canon Controversy PDF eBook |
Author | William Casement |
Publisher | Transaction Publishers |
Pages | 200 |
Release | |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 9781412837064 |
Debate about teaching the great books of the Western canon has galvanized American higher education in recent years. The Great Canon Controversy provides an overview of the debate, summarizing the position for the canon and the position against it. Casement supports continued teaching of the canon and respect for it, while calling for revising reading lists to include nontraditional works. Part I describes how the canon was taught from ancient Greece to the present, noting key arguments for this form of pedagogy that are still with us today, specific books that were taught at different times over the centuries, and controversies the canon has been subject to in the past. Part II deals with anticanonism, epistemological and political dimensions of the theory underlying it. Casement then shows concrete examples of anticanonism in operation, at Stanford University and St. Lawrence University. Casement argues that, while much of what anticanonists say is hyperbolic or mistaken, we should listen to their demand to give fair treatment to works by marginalized authors and to great non-Western works. This means re-reviewing works worthy of canonization that may have been obscured by prejudice, but still requiring that they make it on their own merits and not out of sympathy for their authors. The Great Canon Controversy will be of great interest to educators and students alike, as well as those interested in the future of higher education in the United States.
Culture and Anarchy
Title | Culture and Anarchy PDF eBook |
Author | Matthew Arnold |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 258 |
Release | 1994-01-01 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9780300058673 |
Culture and Anarchy remains a central text of the Westem intellectual tradition, articulating many of the issues around which the modern debate about cultural politics revolves: the nature of the State; the concept of freedom as governed by reason, in contrast to untrammelled liberty; the place of religion in society; the very idea of culture as an inward operation of the mind. A measure of the work's permanent influence is the number of current terms first coined in its pages, terms such as Philistines, Barbarians, and the famous definition of culture as the best that has been thought and said. Accused in some quarters of cultural elitism, Arnold's ideas continue to occupy the foreground of the debate, and for this reason the edition includes specially commissioned essays which set the text within contemporary, multicultural perspectives.
American Higher Education Since World War II
Title | American Higher Education Since World War II PDF eBook |
Author | Roger L. Geiger |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 398 |
Release | 2021-05-25 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 0691216924 |
A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education In the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides an in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking readers from the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education to the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and the ascendancy of the modern research university. He demonstrates how growth has been the defining feature of modern higher education, but how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons. Sweeping in scope and richly insightful, this groundbreaking book provides the context we need to understand the complex issues facing our colleges and universities today, from rising inequality and skyrocketing costs to deficiencies in student preparedness and lax educational standards.
Against the Grain
Title | Against the Grain PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Goldberg |
Publisher | Wipf and Stock Publishers |
Pages | 205 |
Release | 2001-10-05 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1579107788 |
This book challenges current thinking on professional ethics and suggests new ways of looking at ethical issues. The contributors to the volume (Michael Goldberg, Richard P. Vance, Deborah Fernhoff, Nancey Murphy, Theophus H. Smith, Jack L. Sammons Jr., William H. Willimon, and Senator John C. Danforth) are outstanding representatives of their respective professions. In this book, using the categories of religion and narrative as methodological tools, they move readers to a more responsive, hopeful, and truthful conduct of the professions.