Liberal Learning

"It's a genuine pleasure to hear spoken Latin--lots of it, and by many of the great classical authors, including Cicero, Ovid, and Virgil--and to follow the story of Gardini's lifelong infatuation with a language that is nowhere and everywhere in our modern lives... This is an audiobook to...

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.

A devoted Christian and avid proponent of liberal education, Charlotte Mason developed a philosophy that became an international movement of parents and schools to reform education. This philosophy forged a synthesis between new and old educational approaches during a time of great educational upheaval and the birth of the progressive movement.

In 1927, classical liberalism, based on a belief in individualism, reason, capitalism, and free trade, was dying, when one of the 20th century's greatest social thinkers wrote this combative and convincing restatement. Nowhere are the key principles of Mises' philosophy better represented than in this timeless work. Mises was a careful and logical theoretician who believed that ideas rule the world, and this especially comes to light in Liberalism.

The liberal arts university has been in decline since well before the virtualization of campus life, increasingly inviting public skepticism about its viability as an institution of personal, civ­ic, and professional growth. New technologies that might have brought people together have instead frustrated the university’s capacity to foster thoughtful citizenship among tomorrow’s lead­ers and exacerbated socioeconomic inequalities that are poison­ing America’s civic culture.

Moving beyond typical conservative and liberal approaches, which seek to either defend or whitewash over violence in the Bible, Disarming Scripture takes a surprising yet compelling approach.

Inside the Liberal Arts accomplishes two ambitious goals at once, and shows why they are inseparable: It explains the nature and purpose of liberal learning – to produce critical thinkers and well-rounded democratic citizens – and offers a probing, accessible guided tour of critical thinking, emphasizing the analytic skills that form the intellectual core of all higher education. Becoming better critical thinkers doesn’t mean we have to become philosophers. As users of language, Scheuer explains, we’re already philosophers.

In Woody Allen's 1973 film, Sleeper, a character wakes up in the future to learn that civilization was destroyed when "a man by the name of Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead." Shanker was condemned by many when he shut down the New York City school system in the bitter strikes of 1967 and 1968, and he was denounced for stirring up animosity between Black parents and Jewish teachers. Later, however, he built alliances with Blacks, and at the time of his death in 1997, such figures as Bill Clinton celebrated Shanker for being an educational reformer.

With more than half a million copies in print worldwide and now in this stunning hardback edition, How to Read a Book is the classic and definitive guide to reading comprehension for students of literature, scholars across disciplines, and anyone who just loves to read. Originally written in...

With all the education options available today, choosing the right school or curriculum for your child can be daunting. But what if you knew what the ideal education looked like? Now you will! C.S. Lewis, the beloved author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, guides us on a journey that contrasts classical and contemporary education approaches. Lewis explains that while the cultivation of virtue was central to classical education, modern education stifles such moral formation by teaching a scientifically-inspired mechanistic vision of the world.

Before she was an author of paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels, N. D. Jones was an educator. In her essay, she reflects on her 20-plus years as an educator in a field where most public school teachers and administrators are middle-class White women responsible for the academic future of more than 20 million students of color. Jones’ insights come from her years of facilitating cultural proficiency professional development for employees in a White-dominated public school system where all is supposed to mean all, yet racial inequity and disproportionality persist.

This collection of reflections from faculty and alumni of the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University celebrates 50 years of a unique and transformative approach to undergraduate education. Named in honor of Robert Maynard Hutchins, who was a leading advocate of reform and innovation in higher education, the Hutchins School provides a compelling model of the kind of integrative and interactive teaching and learning that is essential for the preservation of democratic culture. In his 1988 book, 'How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University,' Martin Lemko ...