Liberal Arts

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The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs

Author : Richard A. Detweiler
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262543109
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs by : Richard A. Detweiler

Download or read book The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs written by Richard A. Detweiler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education: how and why it has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment. In ongoing debates over the value of a college education, the role of the liberal arts in higher education has been blamed by some for making college expensive, impractical, and even worthless. Defenders argue that liberal arts education makes society innovative, creative, and civic-minded. But these qualities are hard to quantify, and many critics of higher education call for courses of study to be strictly job-specific. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Detweiler, drawing on interviews with more than 1,000 college graduates aged 25 to 65, offers empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education. Detweiler finds that a liberal arts education has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment over a lifetime. Unlike other defenders of a liberal arts education, Detweiler doesn’t rely on philosophical arguments or anecdotes but on data. He developed a series of interview questions related to the content attributes of liberal arts (for example, course assignments and majors), the context attributes (out-of-class interaction with faculty and students, teaching methods, campus life), and the purpose attributes (adult life outcomes). Interview responses show that although both the content of study and the educational context are associated with significant life outcomes, the content of study has less relationship to positive adult life outcomes than the educational context. The implications of this research, Detweiler points out, range from the advantages of broadening areas of study to factors that could influence students’ decisions to attend certain colleges.

You Can Do Anything

Author : George Anders
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316548855
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis You Can Do Anything by : George Anders

Download or read book You Can Do Anything written by George Anders and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything.

Why Choose the Liberal Arts?

Author : Mark William Roche
Publisher : University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN 13 : 0268091749
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (68 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Choose the Liberal Arts? by : Mark William Roche

Download or read book Why Choose the Liberal Arts? written by Mark William Roche and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2010-08-20 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where the value of a liberal arts education is no longer taken for granted, Mark William Roche lucidly and passionately argues for its essential importance. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience in higher education as a student, faculty member, and administrator, Roche deftly connects the broad theoretical perspective of educators to the practical needs and questions of students and their parents. Roche develops three overlapping arguments for a strong liberal arts education: first, the intrinsic value of learning for its own sake, including exploration of the profound questions that give meaning to life; second, the cultivation of intellectual virtues necessary for success beyond the academy; and third, the formative influence of the liberal arts on character and on the development of a sense of higher purpose and vocation. Together with his exploration of these three values—intrinsic, practical, and idealistic—Roche reflects on ways to integrate them, interweaving empirical data with personal experience. Why Choose the Liberal Arts? is an accessible and thought-provoking work of interest to students, parents, and administrators.

Liberal Arts at the Brink

Author : Victor E. Ferrall Jr.
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674263391
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberal Arts at the Brink by : Victor E. Ferrall Jr.

Download or read book Liberal Arts at the Brink written by Victor E. Ferrall Jr. and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal arts colleges represent a tiny portion of the higher education market—no more than 2 percent of enrollees. Yet they produce a stunningly large percentage of America’s leaders in virtually every field of endeavor. The educational experience they offer—small classes led by professors devoted to teaching and mentoring, in a community dedicated to learning—has been a uniquely American higher education ideal. Liberal Arts at the Brink is a wake-up call for everyone who values liberal arts education. A former college president trained in law and economics, Ferrall shows how a spiraling demand for career-related education has pressured liberal arts colleges to become vocational, distorting their mission and core values. The relentless competition among them to attract the “best” students has driven down tuition revenues while driving up operating expenses to levels the colleges cannot cover. The weakest are being forced to sell out to vocational for-profit universities or close their doors. The handful of wealthy elite colleges risk becoming mere dispensers of employment and professional school credentials. The rest face the prospect of moving away from liberal arts and toward vocational education in order to survive. Writing in a personable, witty style, Ferrall tackles the host of threats and challenges liberal arts colleges now confront. Despite these daunting realities, he makes a spirited case for the unique benefits of the education they offer—to students and the nation. He urges liberal arts colleges to stop going it alone and instead band together to promote their mission and ensure their future.

Liberal Arts for the Christian Life

Author : Jeffry C. Davis
Publisher : Crossway
ISBN 13 : 1433524058
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (335 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberal Arts for the Christian Life by : Jeffry C. Davis

Download or read book Liberal Arts for the Christian Life written by Jeffry C. Davis and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over forty years, Leland Ryken has championed and modeled a Christian liberal arts education. His scholarship and commitment to integrating faith with learning in the classroom have influenced thousands of students who have sat under his winsome teaching. Published in honor of Professor Ryken and presented on the occasion of his retirement from Wheaton College, this compilation carries on his legacy of applying a Christian liberal arts education to all areas of life. Five sections explore the background of a Christian liberal arts education, its theological basis, habits and virtues, differing approaches, and ultimate aims. Contributors including Philip Ryken, Jeffry Davis, Duane Litfin, John Walford, Alan Jacobs, and Jim Wilhoit analyze liberal arts as they relate to the disciplines, the Christian faith, and the world. Also included are a transcript of a well-known 1984 chapel talk delivered by Leland Ryken on the student's calling and practical chapters on how to read, write, and speak well. Comprehensive in scope, this substantial volume will be a helpful guide to anyone involved in higher education, as well as to students, pastors, and leaders looking for resources on the importance of faith in learning.

In Defense of a Liberal Education

Author : Fareed Zakaria
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393247694
Total Pages : 93 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis In Defense of a Liberal Education by : Fareed Zakaria

Download or read book In Defense of a Liberal Education written by Fareed Zakaria and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition. The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree." These messages are hitting home: majors like English and history, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline. "I get it," writes Fareed Zakaria, recalling the atmosphere in India where he grew up, which was even more obsessed with getting a skills-based education. However, the CNN host and best-selling author explains why this widely held view is mistaken and shortsighted. Zakaria eloquently expounds on the virtues of a liberal arts education—how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically. He turns our leaders' vocational argument on its head. American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years. Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning—precisely the gifts of a liberal education. Zakaria argues that technology is transforming education, opening up access to the best courses and classes in a vast variety of subjects for millions around the world. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history.

Liberal Arts and Sciences

Author : Christopher A. Ulloa Chaves ED.D
Publisher : Trafford Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1490737006
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (97 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberal Arts and Sciences by : Christopher A. Ulloa Chaves ED.D

Download or read book Liberal Arts and Sciences written by Christopher A. Ulloa Chaves ED.D and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-28 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Liberal Arts and Sciences ... should be read by those persons who wish to seek a higher level of critical, compassionate, and creative thinking, It is well-written, insightful, and is a fascinating examination of education...and significant traits such as honesty, creativity, ethical behavior, and wisdom—concepts that are sorely needed in today’s global world.” -US Review of Books Nominated for the American Association of Colleges & University's 2015 Frederic W. Ness Book Award. Nominated for the 2015 Eric Hoffer Book Award. “This book will help individuals become more open, courageous, and willing to engage in meaningful and constructive dialogue in their search for truth.” -Miriam Montano, undergraduate student in California This book will, first, move the reader through philosophy’s major conceptions as ideas that initiate and sustain educational and learning processes. The book will then provide an historical account of the key periods, development, and continuing contributions of the liberal arts enterprise. The book also includes three chapters on the application dimensions of the liberal arts model of higher learning, mainly its development of critical, creative, and ethical thinking competencies for effective citizenship and problem solving in the world.

Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century

Author : Robert E. Luckett Jr.
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496833201
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century by : Robert E. Luckett Jr.

Download or read book Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century written by Robert E. Luckett Jr. and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by William D. Adams, Sarah Archino, Mario J. Azevedo, Katrina Byrd, Rico D. Chapman, Helen O. Chukwuma, Monica Flippin Wynn, Tatiana Glushko, Eric J. Griffin, Kathi R. Griffin, Yumi Park Huntington, Thomas M. Kersen, Robert E. Luckett Jr., Floyd W. Martin, Preselfannie W. McDaniels, Dawn Bishop McLin, Laura Ashlee Messina, Byron D'Andra Orey, Kathy Root Pitts, Candis Pizzetta, Lawrence Sledge, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, Joseph Martin Stevenson, Seretha D. Williams, and Karen C. Wilson-Stevenson Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century delves into the essential nature of the liberal arts in America today. During a time when the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math dominate the narrative around the future of higher education, the liberal arts remain vital but frequently dismissed academic pursuits. While STEAM has emerged as a popular acronym, the arts get added to the discussion in a way that is often rhetorical at best. Written by scholars from a diversity of fields and institutions, the essays in this collection legitimize the liberal arts and offer visions for the role of these disciplines in the modern world. From the arts, pedagogy, and writing to social justice, the digital humanities, and the African American experience, the essays that comprise Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century bring attention to the vast array of ways in which the liberal arts continue to be fundamental parts of any education. In an increasingly transactional environment, in which students believe a degree must lead to a specific job and set income, colleges and universities should take heed of the advice from these scholars. The liberal arts do not lend themselves to the capacity to do a single job, but to do any job. The effective teaching of critical and analytical thinking, writing, and speaking creates educated citizens. In a divisive twenty-first-century world, such a citizenry holds the tools to maintain a free society, redefining the liberal arts in a manner that may be key to the American republic.

What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts?

Author : Michael Bérubé
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393060379
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (63 download)

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Book Synopsis What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts? by : Michael Bérubé

Download or read book What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts? written by Michael Bérubé and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2006 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Described as one of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by right-wing critic David Horowitz, Michael Bérubé has become a leading liberal voice in the ongoing culture wars. This "smooth and swift read" (New Criterion) offers a definitive rebuttal of conservative activists' most incendiary claims about American universities, and in the process makes a supple case for liberalism itself. An important polemic as well as "a clear-eyed, occasionally quite humorous account of the joys and frustrations of running a college classroom" (New York Observer), this book is required reading for anyone concerned about the political climate on and off campus.

Logic as a Liberal Art

Author : R. E. Houser
Publisher : Catholic University of America Press
ISBN 13 : 0813232341
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (132 download)

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Book Synopsis Logic as a Liberal Art by : R. E. Houser

Download or read book Logic as a Liberal Art written by R. E. Houser and published by Catholic University of America Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twenty-first century there are two ways to study logic. The more recent approach is symbolic logic. The history of teaching logic since World War II, however, casts doubt on the idea that symbolic logic is best for a first logic course. Logic as a Liberal Art is designed as part of a minority approach, teaching logic in the "verbal" way, in the student's "natural" language, the approach invented by Aristotle. On utilitarian grounds alone, this "verbal" approach is superior for a first course in logic, for the whole range of students. For millennia, this "verbal" approach to logic was taught in conjunction with grammar and rhetoric, christened the trivium. The decline in teaching grammar and rhetoric in American secondary schools has led Dr. Rollen Edward Houser to develop this book. The first part treats grammar, rhetoric, and the essential nature of logic. Those teachers who look down upon rhetoric are free, of course, to skip those lessons. The treatment of logic itself follows Aristotle's division of the three acts of the mind (Prior Analytics 1.1). Formal logic is then taken up in Aristotle's order, with Parts on the logic of Terms, Propositions, and Arguments. The emphasis in Logic as a Liberal Art is on learning logic through doing problems. Consequently, there are more problems in each lesson than would be found, for example, in many textbooks. In addition, a special effort has been made to have easy, medium, and difficult problems in each Problem Set. In this way the problem sets are designed to offer a challenge to all students, from those most in need of a logic course to the very best students.

The Liberal Arts Tradition

Author : Kevin Wayne Clark
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781600512254
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Liberal Arts Tradition by : Kevin Wayne Clark

Download or read book The Liberal Arts Tradition written by Kevin Wayne Clark and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book introduces readers to a paradigm for understanding classical education that transcends the familiar three-stage pattern of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Instead, this book describes the liberal arts as a central part of a larger and more robust paradigm of classical education that should consist of piety, gymnastic, music, liberal arts, philosophy, and theology. The book also recovers the means by which classical educators developed more than just intellectual virtue (by means of the seven liberal arts) by holistically cultivating the mind, body, will, and affections."--Back cover.

Doing Liberal Arts Education

Author : Mikiko Nishimura
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9811328773
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (113 download)

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Book Synopsis Doing Liberal Arts Education by : Mikiko Nishimura

Download or read book Doing Liberal Arts Education written by Mikiko Nishimura and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines and shares concrete and specific strategies and policies for doing liberal arts education in a wide range of contexts. It deepens readers’ understanding of the processes of adopting interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches to the development and teaching of liberal arts courses, integrating diversity and inclusion in policies and practices of liberal arts education, and institutionalizing evidence-based policy making. Moreover, it provides educators and policymakers with practical guidelines on how to incorporate core values of liberal arts education.

Distinctively American

Author : Stephen R. Graubard
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351522078
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (515 download)

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Book Synopsis Distinctively American by : Stephen R. Graubard

Download or read book Distinctively American written by Stephen R. Graubard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is much change underway in American higher education. New technologies are challenging the teaching practices of yesterday, distance learning is lauded, and private firms offer to certify the educational credentials that businesses and others will deem satisfactory. In this new environment, America's liberal arts colleges propound a quite different set of values. Their continuing faith in the liberal arts--not as the nineteenth century chose to define them but as the twenty-first century will be obliged to reconsider them--is being tested.Distinctively American examines the American liberal arts college as an institution, from its role in the lives of students, to its value as a form of education. It explores the threats faced by liberal arts colleges as well as the transformative role, both positive and negative, information technology will play in their future development and survival. In the preface introducing the volume, Stephen Graubard examines the history of the American liberal arts colleges, from their early disdained reputations in comparison to European schools, to their slow rise to becoming "world-class universities."This important volume explores the triumphs and challenges of one segment of the American higher educational universe. It also addresses a larger question: What ought this country be teaching its young, the many millions who now throng its colleges and universities? Distinctively American is essential reading for all concerned with the future of higher education.

Writing Program Administration at Small Liberal Arts Colleges

Author : Jill M. Gladstein
Publisher : Parlor Press LLC
ISBN 13 : 1602353077
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing Program Administration at Small Liberal Arts Colleges by : Jill M. Gladstein

Download or read book Writing Program Administration at Small Liberal Arts Colleges written by Jill M. Gladstein and published by Parlor Press LLC. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION AT SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES presents an empirical study of the writing programs at one hundred small, private liberal arts colleges. Jill M. Gladstein and Dara Rossman Regaignon provide detailed information about a type of writing program not often highlighted in the scholarly record and offer a model for such national, multi-institutional research.

Mathematics for the Liberal Arts

Author : Jason I. Brown
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 146659358X
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (665 download)

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Book Synopsis Mathematics for the Liberal Arts by : Jason I. Brown

Download or read book Mathematics for the Liberal Arts written by Jason I. Brown and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook teaches everyday mathematics topics to non-math majors at the undergraduate level. Through numerous examples and more than 600 exercises, students learn how to use math seamlessly in a variety of practical areas, from conversion factors, statistics, visualization, money, and risk to games, art, music, and humor. The text develops a logical, real-world approach to data and reasoning. Real-life stories in each chapter capture students' interest and motivate them to work through the math. Ancillaries are available on the author's website.

Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads

Author : Sheila Curran
Publisher : Ten Speed Press
ISBN 13 : 0307815846
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads by : Sheila Curran

Download or read book Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads written by Sheila Curran and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people would love to have 20/20 hindsight on their careers. In Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads, college career experts Sheila Curran and Suzanne Greenwald have assembled the next best thing: the collective wisdom of a diverse and inspiring cast of success stories—twenty-three liberal arts graduates who have gone on to all manner of fascinating and satisfying professions. The authors have combined lessons from the stories with their own hands-on experience with thousands of students and graduates to outline a framework for finding a perfect career. What makes Smart Moves different is that it provides essential career advice while being fun to read. Readers will be struck by the frankness of the biographies of real graduates whose careers have taken twists and turns. Todd turned his passion into a living as the founder and CEO of several small businesses and a professional cellist; Thad's path took him from English major to a dream job in the front office of a major league baseball team; and a subway ride helped Sharon speed her intended career leap from a luxury department store to journalism. What binds them together is that they have all made smart moves on the way to career success—both during their liberal arts education and in the real world.Smart Moves not only champions the value of a liberal arts education, it also embraces the complexity of careers, and the notion that many different factors contribute to success: education, experience, attitude, personal characteristics, and a good dose of luck. Smart Moves is an inspiration to all those who are seeking proven strategies to follow their passion—no matter what their age.The quarter million liberal arts students who receive diplomas each year will truly benefit from the insights of Smart Moves. But this book is equally helpful for high school students (and their guidance counselors) looking at colleges, for graduates still looking for their life's work, and for parents who want to understand career realities for their children. An innovative career guide for our stressful, fast-paced world, Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads illuminates valuable career lessons with sharp advice and an unparalleled framework for success.

Not Trivial

Author : Laurie Endicott Thomas
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781938634994
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (349 download)

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Book Synopsis Not Trivial by : Laurie Endicott Thomas

Download or read book Not Trivial written by Laurie Endicott Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why phonics and grammar are not trivial. Why have our political discussions in the United States become so ugly and pointless? Why are we suffering from such a breakdown in civility? In Not Trivial: How Studying the Traditional Liberal Arts Can Set You Free, Laurie Endicott Thomas explains that the problem boils down to education. The word civility originally meant training in the liberal arts. The classical liberal arts were a set of seven disciplines that were developed largely in ancient Athens to promote productive political discussions within Athenian democracy. They included three verbal arts (the trivium): grammar, logic, and rhetoric. They also included four arts of number, space, and time (the quadrivium): mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. These arts helped students learn to think rationally and to express themselves persuasively. The ancient Romans called these studies the liberal arts because they were considered appropriate for freeborn men, as opposed to slaves. Slaves were taught only the servile and mechanical arts, to make them more productive as workers. During the Renaissance, the classical liberal arts curriculum was supplemented by the humanities, including history, philosophy, literature, and art. Like the liberal arts, the humanities were intended to promote productive and even pleasant discussions among political decision-makers. Today, the sciences would have to be added to that curriculum. Thomas explains that the problems in our political system start in first grade. Our teachers are being trained and often forced to use a method of reading instruction that does not work. As a result, many children suffer from lifelong problems with reading. Our teachers are also being pressured to neglect the teaching of grammar. As a result, many children end up with poor reading comprehension and lifelong problems with logical thinking. Thus, they will have difficulty in making or appreciating reasonable arguments. Thomas argues that we cannot hope to enjoy freedom and equality until all children get the kind of education that is appropriate for free people. She concludes with a clear explanation of what that curriculum would be like.