The fevered controversy over America's educational future isn't simply academic; those who have proposed sweeping reforms include government officials, politicians, foundation officers, think-tank researchers, journalists, media pundits, and university administrators. Drowned out in that noisy debate are the voices of those who actually teach the liberal arts exclusively to undergraduates in our nation's small liberal arts colleges, or SLACs. The Best Kind of College attempts to rectify that glaring oversight. As an insiders' "guide" to the liberal arts in its truest form the volume brings together thirty award-winning professors from across the country to convey in various ways some of the virtues, the electricity, and, overall, the importance of the small-seminar, face-to-face approach to education, as typically featured in SLACs. Before we in the United States abandon or compromise our commitment to the liberal arts--oddly enough, precisely at a time when our global competitors are discovering, emulating, and founding American-style SLACs and new liberal arts programs--we need a wake-up call, namely to the fact that the nation's SLACs provide a time-tested model of educational integrity and success.

Product Description: It is the purpose of this book to examine the ever-changing meaning of the term “liberal arts” and to trace its development from antiquity to the present. In doing so, the text will compare and contrast the values of such an education with the other important objective of schools and colleges, which is to prepare students with appropriate occupational training...read more

Product Description: Many in higher education fear that the humanities are facing a crisis. But even if the rhetoric about “crisis” is overblown, humanities departments do face increasing pressure from administrators, politicians, parents, and students...read more

This book introduces a groundbreaking teaching method intended to help English, social studies, and humanities teachers address difficult or controversial topics in their secondary classrooms. Because these issues are rarely addressed in teacher preparation programs, few teachers feel confident facilitating conversations around culturally and politically sensitive issues in ways that honor their diverse students' voices and lead to critical, transformative thinking. The author describes a four-step method to help teachers structure discussions and written assignments while concurrently assisting them in addressing Common Core State Standards. Designed to aid students in both developing their own viewpoints on contentious issues and in actively critiquing those of their teachers and peers, these practices will enhance any humanities curriculum.

Product Description: This book offers research-based models of exemplary practice for educators at all grade levels, from primary school to university, who want to integrate human rights education into their classrooms. It includes ten examples of projects that have been effectively implemented in classrooms: two from elementary school, two from middle school, three from high school, two from community college, and one from a university...read more

Product Description: Exploring the ways undergraduate theatre programs can play a significant role in accomplishing the aims and learning outcomes of a contemporary liberal education, Kindelan argues that theatre's signature pedagogy helps all undergraduates become actively engaged in developing critical and value-focused skills...read more

Respected author, critic, and essayist Bruce Bawer—whose previous book, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist—now offers a trenchant and sweeping critique of the sorry state of higher education since the campus revolutions of the late ’60s and early ’70s. In The Victims’ Revolution, Bawer incisively contends that the rise of identity-based college courses and disciplines (Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Gay Studies, etc.) forty years ago has resulted in an impoverishment of thought and widespread political confusion, while filling the brains of students with politically correct mush. Timely, controversial, and brilliantly argued, Bawer’s The Victims’ Revolution is necessary reading for students, educators, and anyone concerned about the contemporary crisis in academia—a serious and important work that stands with other essential books on the subject, like The Shadow University by Alan Kors, Illiberal Education by Dinesh D’Souza, and  Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.

Education and Its Discontents: Teaching, the Humanities, and the Importance of a Liberal Education in the Age of Mass Information, by Mark Moss, is an exploration of how the traditional educational environment, particularly in the post-secondary world, is changing as a consequence of the influx of new technology. Students come to the classroom or lecture hall expecting to have their habits and tastes, gleaned from the online world, replicated in an Educational environment. Faculty who do not adapt face enormous obstacles, and faculty that do adapt run the risk of eroding the integrity of what they have been trained to teach. Students now have access to myriad of technologies that instead of supplementing the educational process, have actually taken it over. Issues that run from plagiarism to the erosion of the humanities are now rampant concerns in the post secondary world. Behavior issues, YouTube videos, cell phones, and the incessant clicking of the computer keys are just a few of the technologies altering the educational landscape. Moss discusses that it is now not only how we learn, but what we continue to teach, and how that enormously important legacy is protected.Education and Its Discontents: Teaching, the Humanities, and the Importance of a Liberal Education in the Age of Mass Information, by Mark Moss, argues that education has changed and the supremacy of the book and the lecture is now open for debate. What has been gained over the last five hundred years is now susceptible to the vagaries of technology, which compel us to question their continuing relevance.

Product Description: Education and Its Discontents: Teaching, the Humanities, and the Importance of a Liberal Education in the Age of Mass Information, by Mark Moss, is an exploration of how the traditional educational environment, particularly in the post-secondary world, is changing as a consequence of the influx of new technology...read more

A short, sharp, and provocative book, "Blow Up the Humanities" has esteemed scholar Toby Miller declaring that there are two humanities in the United States. One is the venerable, powerful humanities of private universities; the other is the humanities of state schools, which focus mainly on job prospects. There is a class division between the twoOCoboth in terms of faculty research and student backgroundOCoand it must end.Miller critically lays waste to the system. He examines scholarly publishing as well as media and cultural studies to show how to restructure the humanities by studying popular cultural phenomena, like video games. Miller ultimately insists that these two humanities must merge in order to survive and succeed in producing an aware and concerned citizenry.

Product Description: What is a liberal arts education? How does it differ from other forms of learning? What are we to make of the debates that surround it? What are its place, its value, and its prospects in the contemporary world? These are questions that trouble students and their parents, educators, critics, and policy-makers, and philosophers of education--among others...read more

Inquiry-driven learners anticipate, embrace, and adapt to disruptive change. Clifton Conrad and Laura Dunek advance a transformative purpose of a college education. They invite stakeholders from across higher education to engage in vigorous dialogue about the aims of a college education―and how to realize those aims. Increasingly influenced by market forces, many universities employ a default purpose of a college education: preparing students for entry into the workforce. As a result, students remain unprepared for a world in which much of the knowledge they acquire will have a shelf life of only a few years. Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners charts a new way forward. It proposes that a college education prepare students to be innovative and adaptable by developing four signature capabilities: core qualities of mind, critical thinking skills, expertise in divergent modes of inquiry, and the capacity to express and communicate ideas. In concert, these capabilities empower students to explore and foster ideas that will prepare them to successfully navigate constant change, capitalize on career opportunities, enrich their personal lives, and thoughtfully engage in public life.This innovative book also explores a wide range of initiatives and practices for educating inquiry-driven learners. Examples illustrate possibilities for developing inquiry-driven learners across the curriculum and are drawn from institutions with remarkably different missions and identities―from research universities to liberal arts colleges.

Product Description: Alienation between the U.S. military and society has grown in recent decades. Such alienation is unhealthy, as it threatens both sufficient civilian control of the military and the long-standing ideal of the "citizen soldier." Nowhere is this issue more predominant than at many major universities, which began turning their backs on the military during the chaotic years of the Vietnam War...read more

Product Description: Dr. Christenson examines several critical questions regarding high education. What is our basic vision and how is it connected to our Lutheran heritage? What are our essential values? How do we educate for human wholeness? How do we intentionally shape the culture of our institutions? What are some of our most serious temptations...read more

This powerful book lays out an inspiring new vision for the teaching of English, building on themes central to Wilhelm's influential ''You Gotta BE The Book''. With this new work, Wilhelm and Novak challenge business as usual in the language arts. They call for nothing short of a revolution in our understanding of the aims and methods of the English classroom, showing what English can do for democratic life, inside and outside of classrooms. With moving portraits of teachers and students, as well as practical strategies and advice, they provide a roadmap to educational transformation far beyond the field of English that will be of interest to a wide audience of teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, and educational leaders.

Founded in 1966, and premised on the idea that motivated sixteen-year-olds are capable of college work, Bard College at Simon’s Rock is an educational «experiment» from the sixties that has endured and prospered. Educating Outside the Lines looks at Simon’s Rock as a pioneer of the early college movement that has begun to reshape the connections between secondary and higher education. Because its curriculum is entirely at the college level, its students handle a challenging B.A. program before having completed the last two years of high school, and may earn their degrees before they are twenty. In this collection, faculty and alumni explore what this unique vantage point can teach about college pedagogy. The book invites educators, parents, and students to re-imagine what college itself could be.