eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
Discusses the importance of the early history of Greek mathematics to education and civic life through a study of the Parthenon and dialogues of Plato.
Liberal education is not a theory. It is the tradition by which Western civilisation has preserved and enriched its inheritance for two and a half thousand years. Yet liberal education is a term that has fallen from use in Britain, its traditional meaning now freely confused with its opposite. This book is intended to correct that misapprehension, through the presentation of original source material from the high points in the liberal education tradition with particular focus on the British experience. Section 1: Origins (c. 450 BC to c. 450 AD) Section 2: The British Tradition (c. 750 to 1950) Section 3: After Tradition (1950 onward) Section 4: Liberal Education Redux (America)
This fascinating cultural and intellectual history focuses on education as practiced by the imperial age Romans, looking at what they considered the value of education and its effect on children. W. Martin Bloomer details the processes, exercises, claims, and contexts of liberal education from the late first century b.c.e. to the third century c.e., the epoch of rhetorical education. He examines the adaptation of Greek institutions, methods, and texts by the Romans and traces the Romans’ own history of education. Bloomer argues that whereas Rome’s enduring educational legacy includes the seven liberal arts and a canon of school texts, its practice of competitive displays of reading, writing, and reciting were intended to instill in the young social as well as intellectual ideas.
The American liberal arts college now appears to be in a crisis that threatens its very existence. Critics have charged that the college no longer delivers on its promise of a liberal education and is in a state of 'moral collapse.' This book analyzes this crisis and offers a radical proposal for its resolution. Crimmel first explains how a college's infidelity to the ideals of liberal education adversely affects its relationship to society, its educational program, and its teachers. He then provides a definition and a defense of liberal education's ideal. Finally, he demonstrates that the college must not submit to any ideology, political agenda, or vocational interest, and that the college's educational program must be centered around a set of rational theoretical and practical skills and that the college teacher must be autonomous and uncompromised by scholarly or administrative responsibilities.
Yale's Reports, published in 1828, is a seminalpublication for understanding the development of American higher education. Giving highest priority to critical thinking skills, this fifty-six-page pamphlet played a central role in clearly delineating teaching objectives, modes of learning, and range of curriculum for the nation s colleges. In a deeply researched and well-crafted analytical narrative, David B. Potts introduces Yale s document, probes its origins and message, surveys its national reception, and assesses its import for liberal education, both then and now. His broadly contextual approach helps readers understand why the young republic, informed and encouraged by Yale s rationale, became a land of liberal arts colleges.
Ranging from Plato in antiquity to Martha Nussbaum in the present era, the authors of the seventy readings included in The Liberal Arts Tradition present significant and exemplary views addressing liberal arts education over the course of its history, particularly in the United States. Most of the documents are newly translated or no longer available in print. Arranged chronologically, each selection is accompanied by an informative introduction and extensive explanatory notes discussing its place within the liberal arts tradition. Based upon the author's twenty-five years of experience leading seminars concerning the history of liberal education, this collection presents a uniquely comprehensive and salient set of documents, while incorporating the neglected portrayal and discussion of women within the history of the liberal arts.
In this prize-winning book, Bruce Kimball provides a cogent study of the historical evolution of the idea of liberal education. Clearly and forcefully argued, the book portrays this evolution as a struggle between two contending points of view - one oratorical and the other philosophical - that have interacted, often controversially, from antiquity to the present.
A life of liberty and responsibility does not just happen, but requires a particular kind of education, one that aims at both a growth of the human soul and an enrichment of political society in justice and the common good. This we call a liberal education. Forgetfulness of liberty is also a forgetfulness of the multi-dimensional nature of the human person, and a diminution of political life. Keeping in mind what can be lost when liberal education is lost, this volume makes the case for recovering what is perennially noble and good in the liberal arts, and why the liberal arts always have a role to play in human flourishing. Each of the authors herein focuses on the connection of three primary themes: human dignity, liberal education, and political society. Intentionally rooted in the hub that joins the three themes, each author seeks to unfold the contemporary significance of that hub. As a whole, the volume explores how the three themes are crucial to each other: how they illuminate each other, how they need each other, and how the loss of one jeopardizes the wellbeing of the others. In individual chapters, the authors engage various relevant aspects of liberal education. As a result, the volume is organized into three parts: Liberal Education and a Life Well Lived; Thinkers on Dignity and Education in History; Contemporary Topics in Dignity and Education. As education is increasingly channeled into an ever more narrow focus on technical specialization, and measured against professional success, students themselves face a maelstrom of campus politics and competing political orthodoxies. These are among the issues that tend to militate against the operative liberty of the student to think and to speak as a person. This edited collection is offered as an invitation to think again about the liberal arts in order to recover the meaning of education as the authentic pursuit of the good life or eudemonia.
