The Battleground of the Curriculum: Liberal Education and American ExperienceStanford University Press, 1994 - 188 pages 'The crisis of liberal education is ... an intellectual crisis of the first magnitude, which constitutes the crisis of our civilization.' These doomsday words of Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind (1987) are among the latest and most politically inflammatory manifestations of a 'crisis' that this book demonstrates has been going on for two centuries. In contrast to the heated polemics and hyperbole of current debates concerning the role of higher education in the United States, this eloquent, balanced, and witty book seeks to bring sense to a volatile subject by reminding us that controversy has always surrounded the curriculum of the modern university. It points out where and how contemporary critics of the curriculum are wrong, historically speaking, and it shows how American ideals of 'liberal education' are obscure, the product of many different attitudes and historical intentions. |
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The Battleground of the Curriculum: Liberal Education and American Experience W. B. Carnochan No preview available - 1993 |
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Page 143 - I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!
Page 43 - This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him ; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature : like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides...
Page 43 - Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk ; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.
Page 46 - ... beauty from sin, the truth from the sophistry of nature, what is innocent from what is poison. You have refused him the masters of human thought, who would in some sense have educated him, because of their incidental corruption : you have shut up from him those whose thoughts strike home to our hearts, whose words are proverbs, whose names are indigenous to all the world, who are the standard of their mother tongue, and the pride and boast of their countrymen, Homer, Ariosto, Cervantes, Shakespeare,...
Page 45 - If then a University is a direct preparation for this world, let it be what it professes. It is not a Convent, it is not a Seminary; it is a place to fit men of the world for the world.
Page 98 - Our prevalent notion is, — and I quoted a number of instances to prove it, — that it is a most happy and important thing for a man merely to be able to do as he likes. On what he is to do when he is thus free to do as he likes, we do not lay so much stress.
Page 47 - The sound instruction of the people is an effect of the high culture of certain classes. The countries which, like the United States, have created a considerable popular instruction without any serious higher instruction, will long have to expiate this fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity of manners, their superficial spirit, their lack of general intelligence.
Page 45 - ... the precious from the vile," beauty from sin, the truth from the sophistry of nature, what is innocent from what is poison. You have refused him the masters of human thought, who would in some sense have educated him, because of their incidental corruption : you have shut up from him those whose thoughts strike home to our...
Page 105 - It is somewhat difficult for us to recognize that the value which we attribute to our own civilization is due to the fact that we participate in this civilization, and that it has been controlling all our actions since the time of our birth...