Liberal education aspires to excellence through the cultivation of free human beings who excel in thought, word, and deed. But what exactly is excellence, and why do we admire it? How do we conceive of what is excellent? What constitutes excellence—either for human beings, or in the realms of philosophy, literature, science, and politics? Why is excellence an aim of liberal education? What kinds of texts, courses, and inquiries contribute to achieving this end? Such questions animate the studies herein. The essays in this volume reflect on the idea of excellence embedded within core texts, as well as how such texts influence and ennoble higher education. In its chapters, we consider rival forms of excellence from ancient Greece and Rome, through modern Europe and America, and beyond. The world of antiquity and its accounts of excellence, as represented in the works of Euripides, Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, and Cicero, are here brought into dialogue with diverse modern perspectives on excellence, as articulated by Shakespeare, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Austen, Darwin, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Nietzsche, as well as (more recently) by John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Cardinal Newman, and Eboo Patel. Our desire to seek and understand excellence transcends borders, and the purpose of this volume is to help perpetuate in contemporary higher education the study of core texts essential to the cultivation of excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

The story of Valley Christian Schools in San Jose, California.

This highly focused collection of papers, commissioned by the National Urban League, offers a candid and courageous portrait of black education in transition. This is a period, as the editors note in their opening remarks, that is characterized by a huge shift from federal responsibility for minority education to authority and autonomy being lodged at the local government level. Further, many institutions that once worked well, no longer do so. Many ambitious social programs and policies that originally promised much, have been abandoned, have failed, or just faded away. Pivotal to these times and changes is the question of the extent to which the American educational system has been, or still is, capable of being responsive to incorporating and even instigating equity and excellence for black Americans. This volume asks the hard questions: is the educational system geared up for the maintenance of anything other than mainstream values? can it adapt to minority youth requirements? when, why, and how do educational policies of majorities and minorities clash? How are priorities to be established--on the basis of wealth or need? The legal statutes and administrative enforcement of equal educational opportunities are explored in depth and with a deep compassion for all parties involved.