A Radical Proposal to Reinvigorate the Teaching of the Liberal Arts

Michael Wayne Santos

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2020
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781475858105
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This book offers a clarion call, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, to "try something!" And not just any something. A systematic, integrated, chronological, multi-disciplinary approach to reinvigorate the teaching of the liberal arts and put them back where they belong—at the center of a student's educational experience. It does not pretend to offer a cure-all or a one-size-fits-all solution to everything that is ailing American higher education, or even secondary education. It does, however, offer a place to begin a discussion, to invite experimentation, and to initiate reform based on solid pedagogy and 2,500 years of time-tested wisdom in the human experience. As such it should be of interest to many people. Those in higher education serious about the crisis facing their institutions could benefit from taking up the gauntlet this volume throws down. For students and parents, the book raises alternatives and poses some hard questions that they should be asking not only as they consider colleges and universities, but of their secondary schools. In fact, anyone who keeps a close eye on the state of education would be interested in what this book adds to the discussion.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “If I Could Do It All Again. . . .”
• 1 The Current Crisis in Higher Education
• 2 The Cost of Doing Business
• 3 What Should Be Common Sense about Education
• 4 A Radical Proposal
• 5 Addressing Objections to the Proposal
• 6 The First Two Years of the Program: A Student’s-Eye View
• 7 To Graduation and Beyond: A Student’s-Eye View Continued
• 8 Beyond Platitudes: Remembering What It Is All About
• Notes
• Bibliography