Defense Of A Liberal Education By Fareed Zakaria

Deresiewicz believes that “The purpose of education in a neoliberal age is to produce producers.”(1) In his introduction, Deresiewicz compares the ideologies of colleges from the 1920s to today’s thoughts. He concluded that “College is seldom about thinking or learning anymore.”(1) He also believes that there is only one value of education now and that is commercial. The other values are tolerated only when they pertain to commercial value. With the new beliefs in neoliberalism, Deresiewicz determines that “The world is not going to change, so we don’t need young people to imagine how it might.”(3) This leads to education just being about information rather than free thinking. He then goes into discussing how there are others who have come to the realization that not everyone can have high paying jobs as well. Deresiewicz concludes that students only care about the skills needed to start their career not obtaining general knowledge. Colleges teach their students to be leaders for their own benefit not the benefit of others. The neoliberal society, Deresiewicz believes, has begun to give students “a sense of helplessness”(5) so they have no

Edmundson, Mark. "On the Uses of a Liberal Education." From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and a Reader. Ed. Stuart Greene and April Lidindsky. Bedford/ St. Martin’s: New York, 2008. 322-337. Print

Liberalism, in general, was an ideological movement that emerged out of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. It embraced the ideas of individualism which were established in the Renaissance and Reformation era. The Renaissance period sparked a belief in the importance of the individual in society. It helped promote the beliefs of classical liberalism which gradually formed into the liberal ideology of the 19th century. Individuals that were waiting to get their individual rights and freedoms were allowed to finally gain liberty and power through this period of time. Classical liberalism developed

Today I read an article by Lane Wallace in The Atlantic. She titled it “Liberal Arts and the Bottom Line.” It was a critique of Milton Friedman’s business philosophy that decreed, “the business of business is business.” The implication seems to be that anything that drives the profit down (i.e. all ethical business practices–fair wages, environmental impact, etc.) was antithetical to the definition of business. Numbers, Friedman said, were the ultimate measure of the success of the business and of individual employees as well. Wallace points out that this model has serious flaws. A singular focus on ‘the bottom line’ can have an incredibly detrimental effect on workers’ lives, the economy, and the environment. She attributes the recent economic downturn and BP oil spill in large part to this philosophy.

According to the classical Greek philosopher, Plato, “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” What Plato means is that the basic traits of an individual must include throughout their lifetime are a craving and want of some sort of object, a feeling or passion for a particular idea, and an understanding of what is to come. Throughout history, the meaning of knowledge has had both a variety of changes and continuity in the way many philosophers would address its idea. In today’s age, understanding can be familiarized in being able to distinguish and recognize a particular thing or situation based off of experience with that particular idea. In the beginning of history, most philosophers believed knowledge

In the article The Liberal Arts Are Not Elitist written by Martha Nussbaum it was said that “Education is not just for citizenship. It prepares people for employment and for lives of rich significance.” That to me is what the goal of a liberal education is, to provide a basic knowledge in multiple areas of content such as: math, reading, writing, history, and science, with addition to preparing a person for global citizenship and to live a fulfilling life. To be a global citizen, means that the person needs to be aware of what is going on in the world around them, to contribute to society, understands how the world works, takes responsibility for their own actions and to be self-sufficient. I strongly believe to receive a true liberal

Higher education in modern day America has become a debated topic, with some saying that it is not worth it due to the debt it leaves upon leaving, and some saying that it opens opportunities that surpass the results of obtaining one. A resulting view from this conflict is that certain forms of education aren’t as beneficial as others. A primary example of one of these less valuable educations is the study of Liberal Arts. Author Sanford J. Ungar discredits this view in his article The New Liberal Arts where he discusses the many misconceptions that have come to form this interpretation. To convince the reader of these misunderstandings, Ungar uses the appeals of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, with heavy appeal to logic (Logos) over the other two. Each misconception uses and focuses on more of one appeal than others, and by doing this, he is very successful in influencing the reader into considering that these misunderstandings are present.

In William Cronon’s Only Connect, Cronon discusses what it means to be liberally educated and why it is a good thing. Cronon explains that he believes that liberal education helps human talent grow, therefore it states that he believes the main goals of getting a liberal education is freedom and growth.

In the 1997 article, “On The Uses of a Liberal Education: As a Weapon In the Hands of the Restless Poor,” published by Harper’s Magazine, the social critic Earl Shorris described how political power could be achieved by a rather non-vocational educational discipline, the humanities. He emphasizes on how the knowledge of a liberal Education can be used as a form of weapon within the lives for the poor.

The topic of the essay is liberal and STEM education, which is a very broad topic. He hits the main points and gives examples of why liberal education is better than STEM education. He wrote this essay because the country has shifted toward teaching more job specific and technical skills. Zakaria explains that liberal arts education made the United States have one of the strongest economies in the world. The countries that solely rely on STEM education can’t accomplish as much because the STEM education doesn’t provide workers who are creative and

To discuss the value of liberal education, there should be a mutual understanding that investing in college means to invest in oneself. Furthermore, while some consider this investment to be a critical stepping stone to success, others dismiss it, explaining that school simply cannot prepare someone for the “real world.” Sanford J. Ungar and Robert Reich explore both of these subjective values in their essays “The New Liberal Arts” and “College is a Ludicrous Waste of Money.” Ungar, the president of Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, discusses why a liberal education should be sought after; he does so by introducing common misconceptions about liberal arts and, using argumentative persuasion, proves their insignificance. On the other hand, Reich, the former secretary of labor, argues against the conventional belief of college being the only road to financial wellbeing; rather, he explains why a two-year education may better accommodate many college students, especially those in need of immediate work or those that simply cannot afford a four-year education. In all, although both Reich and Ungar generally discuss liberal education, their perspectives differ when it comes to its practicality in the current economy. Also, to express their different views about liberal arts, the authors use contrasting tones to present their ideas to different intended audiences.

While the term liberal education is heard from the most prestigious university to an inner city community college, the phrase itself has a hazy definition at best. While educators across America struggle with the definition of the phrase, William Cronon uses purpose, structure, and appeals in his essay "Only Connect: The Goals of Liberal education," to define a liberally educated being and the characteristics that such an education should impart. Cronon capitalizes on inductive structuring to lead the reader along, gently building each new statement upon a foundation of previous ideas. This effectively leads the reader to a strange

In James V, Schall’s A Students Guide to Liberal Learning, he addresses the idea and importance of an authentic liberal arts education. Schall inquires about books and scholars of which centralize around the idea of a liberal education and of which has shaped our society. Schall examines the works of several authors who are in his opinion the guides to learning, and his essay serves as a fundamental building block for the creation of a “Personal Library”.

In his essay, “Idiot Nation,” Michael Moore directly conveys the horrid truth behind American education when he utters the sheer words, “the knowledge (students) acquire in school is not going to serve them throughout their lifetimes. Many of them will have four to five careers in a lifetime. It will be their ability to navigate information that will matter” (Moore 141). According to Moore, American education today is by no means preparing students for the real world of work. In fact, he infers that students must acquire the acute skill of navigating through information that will guide them into the career they will eventually pursue. The American school system not only teaches students unnecessary material, but also does not stimulate principle qualities that students need in order to develop into bright, innovative, and independent individuals. Structured public education does not breed entrepreneurial spirit; but rather, it destroys it. For what seems like endless years, students are programmed to obey rules, to do homework, to accept discipline rather than learn. They simply learn to submerge their unique personalities under the sort of “totalitarian dictatorship,” which the American school has come to represent implicitly (Moore 147). Because they don’t promote intelligence, creativity, and individuality, current-day American schools fail to prepare their students for the modernized, competitive world of labor, where an idea parallel to Herbert Spencer’s “survival of

The implications of the political imbalance in the academy not only reach professors and students, which is the extent Gross covers in his book, but they travel further. In recent news, this issue between conservatives and liberal academics has resulted in proposed legislation to combat it. In Iowa, a Republican Senator introduced a bill that would require all professors to state their party affiliation before being hired (DailyKos.com). In addition to this rule, there is a percentage balance requirement among professor parties for universities, that the majority party may not exceed ten percent above the minority party (DailyKos.com). This present example of the conservative campaign against the liberals in the professoriate is an absurd