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This volume is a timely and provocative analysis of the crisis provoked by the devaluation of the liberal arts and sciences in colleges and universities in the United States, which has accompanied the growing popularity of practical and professional programs of study. This technicization of higher education's curriculum has also coincided with declining academic standards and a growing crisis of literacy among today's students. The new emphasis on developing useful knowledge and marketable skills, the book contends, has been at the expense of nurturing critically aware and intellectually able citizens through an education enriched by the liberal arts. The editors of this book have assembled a distinguished roster of academicians who provide illuminating critical commentary on these interwined issues and wide-ranging alternatives for recovery of higher learning.
The first part of
The Liberal Arts in a Time of Crisis explores the politics and ideology underscoring the development of curricular policies and pedagogical trends in colleges today. Some of the fallout of these new policies has been rampant anti-intellectualism among students and increasingly narrow and esoteric research specialization among faculty. In the concluding sections, contributors examine the shortcomings of the literacy crusade currently being organized by the educational establishment and provide workable guidelines for refocusing the curriculum and revitalizing the learning process. All those concerned with these issues will find this book invaluable.
List of contents
Introduction
Curricular Policy, Pedagogy and Politics--A Critical ReappraisalThe Depoliticization of the Liberal Arts by Emil Oestereicher
Promoting the "New Practicality"--Curricular Policies for the 1990s by Barbara Ann Scott
Ideology and the Politics of Public Higher Education: Responses to Budget Crises and Curricular Reorganization by Michael Engel
The Therapeutic Classroom--A Critique and an Alternative by Jean Bethke Elshtain
The Dread of Innovation in Universities by Alfred McClung Lee
Academic Freedom, Literacy, and the Liberal Arts by Stanley Aronowitz
The Decline of Literacy and Liberal Learning by Barbara Ann Scott
Toward Recovery of Higher LearningReclaiming the Tradition--Educational Reform in Historical Perspective by Leon Botstein
Critical Literacy and the Legacy of Marxist Discourse by Henry A. Giroux
Humanities in the Education of Minorities by Huel D. Perkins
Reflections on the Education of Women by Elizabeth Briant Lee
Foreign Languages and Humanistic Learning by Rosette Liberman
Revitalizing the Modern Humanities by Henri Peyre
The Unity and Utility of Learning by Gilbert J. Sloan
Escape from Folly--Academic Standards and the Liberal Arts by Ronald Colman
Coda: Confronting the Conservative Crusade for Literacy--Dissenting Voices (A Dialogue) by Leon Botstein, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Engel, Alfred McClung Lee, Henry A. Giroux, and Stanley Aronowitz
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
BARBARA ANN SCOTT is Associate Professor with the State University of New York.
