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Informationen zum Autor Mark Edmundson Klappentext Mark Edmundson's essays reclaim college not as the province of high-priced tuition, career training, and interactive online courses, but as the place where serious people go to broaden their minds and learn to live the rest of their lives. A renowned professor of English at the University of Virginia, Edmundson has felt firsthand the pressure on colleges to churn out a productive, high-caliber workforce for the future. Yet in these essays, many of which have run in places such as Harper's and the New York Times, he reminds us that there is more to education than greater productivity. With prose exacting yet expansive, tough-minded yet optimistic, Edmundson argues forcefully that the liberal arts are more important today than ever. Why Teach? offers Edmundson's collected writings on the subject, including several pieces that are new and previously unpublished. What they show, collectively, is that higher learning is not some staid, old notion but a necessary remedy for our troubled times. Why Teach? is brimming with the wisdom and inspiration that make learning possible. WHY TEACH? is a heartfelt and provocative book that will interest anyone who wonders what happened to the idea that college should be a life-altering, mind-expanding experience. With wry humor and hard-won wisdom, Mark Edmundson offers an inspiring vision of the liberal arts as a vehicle for personal transformation. Tom Perotta, author of LITTLE CHILDREN and THE LEFTOVERS In prose so fresh and personal it leaps off the page, Mark Edmundson launches a stinging critique of higher education today. Everywhere he sees teachers flattering students, confirming their prejudices, and training them for the success game rather than opening their minds to new ways of looking at the world. His teaching ideal, developed here in exemplary detail, is at once utopian and absolutely essential. This book deserves to be widely read. Morris Dickstein, author of GATES OF EDEN and DANCING IN THE DARK Mark Edmundson obviously missed the intellectual timidity gene that's so helpful for an academic career. He has the audacity to argue in this book that universities should not be business and consumer training facilities, internet hookup sports, and workout centers, but places where students grapple with 'perspective-altering intellectual challenges." Gerald Graff, Professor of English and Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, former President, Modern Language Association ...
