In Defense of a Liberal Education

A much needed look at the value of generalized education vs. STEM subjects. Fared makes a strong case for the general education to meet the changing needs of societies and individuals as time goes forward. STEM education is a great choice for students who are interested in these subjects, and certainly provides more immediately marketable skills, if that is the goal. These are vital in our technical world. However, many individuals are not interested in a technical subject, A broad education provides the foundation for long term development of critical thought processes, which our society needs as well.

The author was, in my case, preaching to the converted. However, the liberal arts and the education that was built upon it appears to be in retreat everywhere. Universities talk a good game, esp here in America, but the public institutions are surrendering to polictiical pressure and the fashion of the day, by not hiring humanities and arts faculties, cutting programs in philosophy, and sinking money into their professional schools. A new dark age of technobarbarians and anti-intellectuals dominates the horizon.

Wonderful review of the badly-neglected liberal education that has been marginalized by the support for so-called STEM courses and specific job training. Liberal education makes for intelligent citizens, tolerance, ability to understand and shift with changing times, and, in the long run, will make better employees and happier people. This topic is not in vogue but is important and needs to be read by every college freshman trying to decide what course of study to follow. They often are led to believe that the general education courses they are required to take are a burdensome obstacle to their quest for job preparation. This book disabuses that notion.

I would recommend this book to parents of school age children, as well as those children. Our school councilors, administrators and teachers should also read this book, as well as our elected politicians. A liberal education is certainly not for every child and we do need engineers and people with a science education. However, let's not completely rule out a liberal education for some..

who would have thought that a well respected journalist would feel it necessary to speak out for a non tech education? this is an excellent book well developed & thorough. so necessary in a world that ignores true education. there is such a difference between education & training. people need to be able to think for themselves

I like Fareed's approach to in depth investigative reporting and so I was very much looking forward to this book. I found it high on vignettes, but low on real substance. In addition, it didn't deliver a so what!

This book is written for a large audience, using simple language to convey a compelling argument about a liberal arts education. One only needs to read today's news that Google seeks to hire employees who are "problem solvers"--that is what a liberal education provides.

The author does an excellent job of presenting the case for learning not just what one needs to know to make a living, but also what one should learn to enjoy life. He uses personal experience and solid research to prove the value of a liberal education.

More recent review after re-reading the book: This is a sober argument for the exceptionalism of the United States. We have survived mediocre test scores, ignorant and narrow legislators, a militant military, specialized educators, the illusions of choice, ignominious testing, excessive competition, to continue to lead the world in innovation, creativity, and the desire to do good. To make this point, Zakaria traces the history of higher education from the Greeks, to Europe, Islam, and nineteenth and twentieth America. He considers the bipartisan moves toward job centered education. He reviews the explanations and warnings of single issue pendants. And he comes out with the overwhelming conclusion that our secret, known only to a few, is the consistent availability of liberal education broadly conceived, having a core, including science and technology, but focused an uncertain and changing future. It’s a gem of an argument. I love it.

Earlier Review: Prometheus enraged Zeus by his discovery of fire, just as Eve angered God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Taking Zeus and God’s side in these stories, legislatures across the country want to narrow the curriculum to training for existing jobs. Amidst a shortage of employment and the stagnation of wages lawmakers, parents, and the college bound are joining the ancient ranks calling for vocational training or at least specific career directed higher education. Who would have known that the tension between knowledge for knowledge sake and job training goes back to the Greek philosophers? What is the origin of progress and creativity? How ought we prepare the next generation of adults? Who should go to school and for what? These are the questions Zakaria addresses in his thorough analysis and gentle polemic for the liberal arts. This dialog ripened among our founders with Franklyn and Jefferson most vocal about the importance of general education. It was a major issue among academics in the 19th and 20th centuries with sides taken about the importance of core, like the Great Books, versus student chosen electives. If you love learning you are sure to revel in the reading of this book.

Fareed Zakaria is a brilliant and knowledgeable writer and thinker. I ordered his book to learn how to effectively persuade my very bright granddaughter to consider a four year liberal arts degree before pursuing a degree in acting. I ended up
ordering her her own copy and using the first copy to share with our book group of seniors with advanced degrees- looking forward to the next generation and back to what we gained by experiencing a liberal arts education 50 years ago!
Thank you Fareed!!

Best defense of a liberal education and associated issues I have encountered in almost 40 years looking. I spent a decade in student academic affairs administration and wish it had been around in 1972 when I redrafted the mission piece for the college Bulletin.

If you cannot think critically, express your thoughts clearly and coherently in writing or in oral discussion and have an understanding of the past that has brought you to the present need to express your position on any subject, you know the reason why a liberal education is a requirement for success in any endeavor. A person cannot progress with technical knowledge alone. Being able to express why and how it is a benefit to an organization and how to implement it is a requisite for personal growth.

A great book and defense of millineals as well. A short and quick provocative read that is essential to understanding the intersection of education, labor skills and critical thinking. Thank you Mr.Zakaria

I loved this book. Although, I have two criticisms. First, you often feel as if Fareed is trying to prove how well read he is and not really sure how he is supporting his argument. Second, it would be better titled, in defense of a well rounded education, how to incorporate liberal education into everyone's education.

An easier-to-read, more accessible to the general reader, version of Andrew Delbanco's "College." He covers the most important issues in higher education and comes down firmly in favor of liberal education. Highly recommended. J. Incledon

Zakaria gives good analysis as to why the liberal arts curricula is more likely to develop the person (brain/mind) to become a critical thinker who is able to articulate and communicate more fully than someone whose field (brain) is in engineering. He synthesizes the scientific with the liberal arts which is the base for the mind's functioning in free association thereby bringing forth such creations as we find in social media today establishing communication effectively.

This is a very convincing argument for a liberal education in terms of training the mind to think. It emphasizes the importance of learning to write well as an aid to thinking. This is a very thought-provoking book.

Well-written; Zackaria is always thoughtful.
Some of his conclusions are based on anecdote, but overall an informative, thought-provoking thesis, written by a very bright man. Of course, it helped that I agree with him.

I have two degrees in English, which I never really used, until now, in retirement, teaching English as a Second Language.
But, I have never regretted my decision, surely not made after deeply thinking about it. And, that for all the reasons Zakaria gives.
He dies nit, however, attach sufficient blame too the faculty for the decline of the Liberal Arts. Especially in the more prestigious universities, the faculty are motivated more towards research and publication than teaching. And those who do teach would rather devote time to their research interest than to teaching basic classes in fields like Literature. I had one, perhaps two great teachers in my years of studying English.  And, at the PhD level, really only one.
Faculty members like Physics Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, who taught a storied basic physics class at CalTech, are somewhat rare. So the faculty, who also became timid about promoting and extolling the Liberal Arts, can share much of the blame for their decline.
One great thing about the book is the way in which Zakaria employs the broad and on-target research he has mined for this project.

Well-written and documented and a good exposition of a major issue in
today's higher education. We can have both STEM and liberal arts if more universities
would take their leadership seriously. Maybe getting rid of the enormous influence
of sports in our colleges is a good place to start.

Excellent presentation in favor of a Liberal Education. We are using the book to give to high school junior girls when we give our book awards for Wellesley College at awards night at the high schools in Sarasota, Fl.

I was expecting more. The title does not link well with the conclusion which makes me feel duped. Liberal education was not defended. If anything, the book shows that today's kids are probably more in tune with the global society and do more to help than their predecessors, hence, supporting the hypothesis that liberal education in college is not necessary for a mature, thoughtful society. I may check out the references but the book was not worth the time.

Author promotes the value of a broader, more liberal education. Claims such provides a basis for a fuller, richer life. Even goes so far as to say it is more appealing to top biz schools, as it produces a deeper, more nuanced student.

Still hard to be convinced that the liberal arts foundation is the best path unless it leads to an optimally prosperous well-being as would specialism. Author claims it can. Sort of an eat your cake and have it too.

Fareed Zakaria was born in 1964 in Mumbai, India. His well-educated parents were Muslims. However, according to the Wikipedia entry about him, he was educated at the Cathedral school in Mumbai, the Catholic school where he received a Western education. He received his undergraduate education at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

In 1964, the year in which he was born, I was 20 years old. Born and raised as an American Catholic, I was the first in my immediate family to go to college (1962-1966). In my undergraduate liberal arts education, I was an English major.

In the early 1960s, young women were significantly over-represented in the population of English majors across the country. Many of them planned to become English teachers in secondary education.

However, in the 1960s and 1970s, American culture was undergoing a serious breakdown of older cultural expectations regarding women. But the breakdown of certain older cultural expectations regarding women was accompanied by new breakthroughs regarding cultural expectations of women.

As a result of this overall breakdown/breakthrough process regarding the cultural expectations of women, there are not as many women undergraduates majoring in English today as there were in the early 1960s, when I was an undergraduate English major.

Now, large breakdown/breakthrough processes are at work in American culture today -- and in Western culture today. Thus we Americans today are transitioning from various older cultural constellations toward emerging newer cultural constellations.

But the focal topic of Zakaria's short new book IN DEFENSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION (2015) is our Western tradition of liberal education. As the book's title indicates, Zakaria sees himself as stepping up and speaking in defense of liberal education.

In our American courts of law, we structure our court proceeds to involve the defense over against the other side, but we do not happen to refer to the other side as the offense. However, in American football, we do refer explicitly to both the defense and the offense.

The debate about liberal education in which Zakaria sees himself involves the adversarial position taken by President Barack Obama of explicitly favoring undergraduate education that supposedly prepares students for good jobs.

As a thought experiment, I invite you to imagine a debates structured around the thesis position that undergraduate students should receive an education that prepares them for good jobs versus the antithesis position that undergraduate students should not receive an education that prepares them for good jobs. Nobody is advocating that imagined antithesis position.

As Mortimer J. Adler, the American philosopher and public intellectual, used to say, we want education to prepare students to make a living and to live well. But what all is involved in learning how to live well? One size doesn't fit all people. However, liberal education is designed to get students to learn how to live well, presumably by helping them to learn how to learn so that they will go on to become life-long learners - in a word, autodidacts.

Arguably adults could become autodidacts even if they had not received a liberal education as undergraduates. However, adults who received a liberal education as undergraduates might be better equipped to go on to become autodidacts than undergraduates who received only vocational training might be.

Historically, medieval European universities involved the arts course of study, and three further courses of specialized vocational and professional education: law, medicine, and theology. Of those three courses of study, the course of study in theology was the longest.

In the medieval Muslim world, Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, was founded in 972, so it is considerably older than the medieval European universities.

In terms of organizational structure, the arts course of study in medieval European universities corresponds roughly to what we Americans refer to as undergraduate education. Today many American universities, including Harvard and Yale, where Zakaria was educated, include an undergraduate liberal arts course of study, and graduate and professional schools in law, medicine, and theology (also known as divinity schools).

However, in terms of the ages of the students, the students in the arts course of study in medieval universities were teenage boys - approximately the ages of students in our American secondary education.

Now, in terms of content, the arts course of study in medieval universities emphasized education in logic - the Aristotelian tradition of logic, based on Aristotle's treatises on formal logic and on certain medieval development in the Aristotelian tradition of logic.

However, even though Aristotle did not compose a separate treatise on his philosophy of education, as John Dewey, for example, did, there is no good reason to think that Aristotle himself would have advocated such a strong emphasis on the Aristotelian tradition of logic.

For example, in Aristotle's famous treatise on civic rhetoric, he explicitly notes that civic orators use three kinds of appeals to persuade people: (1) logos, (2) pathos, and (3) ethos. Logos would involve logic (also known as dialectic). (In theory, logos could involve all the sound effects involved in poetry and oratory.) But Aristotle explicitly recognizes that logos alone is usually not enough to persuade people in the arenas of civic oratory.

But Renaissance humanism favored a somewhat different course of study in which logic was not emphasized as much as it had been in the medieval arts course of study. Historically, the course of study at Harvard College and Yale College reflected the general values of the Renaissance humanist educators.

Historically, medieval European universities emerged under the auspices of Roman Catholics. However, after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s, there was an upsurge in formal education in Europe - among both Protestants and Catholics. Among Catholics in Europe, the early Jesuit educators emerged as favoring the new kind of formal education favored by Renaissance humanism, instead of the older Catholic emphasis on the Aristotelian tradition of logic in the arts course of study in medieval universities.

Historically, American primary, secondary, and undergraduate education have embodied the emphasis and general values favored by Renaissance humanists.

No doubt the formal education that Zakaria received at the Cathedral school in Mumbai also embodied the emphasis and general values favored by Renaissance humanists.

To broadly sketch the history I've just outline here, Zakaria draws on Bruce Kimball's fine book ORATORS AND PHILOSOPHERS: A HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF LIBERAL EDUCATION (1986) to structure his brief history of liberal education (pages 40-71). As Zakaria notes, both the orators' emphasis in liberal education and the philosophers' emphasis go back to ancient Greece.

The philosophers' emphasis on logic dominated the arts course of study in medieval universities with their emphasis on the Aristotelian tradition of logic.

The orators' emphasis dominated in the kind of liberal education favored by Renaissance humanists.

Now, back to the big debate in American culture today.

Arguably the present emphasis on vocational education in American culture grows out of our American emphasis on land-grant universities, including of course the University of Minnesota. So undergraduate vocational education has a venerable history in American culture. (Disclosure: I am professor emeritus in writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth.)

Arguably vocational education in American culture is rooted in and reflects the American tradition of pragmatism in philosophy - the philosophers' side of the debate between the orators and the philosophers regarding liberal education that Kimball discusses.

Historically, the orators in American cultures have not gone unnoticed, to say the least. See Sacvan Bercovitch's book THE AMERICAN JEREMIAD (2nd ed., 2012; 1st ed., 1978).

No doubt orators have played a significant role in American culture. However, thus far, the orators' position regarding liberal education that Kimball discusses has not produced a book about American education that equals John Dewey's influential book DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION (1916).

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I would commend Martha C. Nussbaum for at least recognizing the need to tie in American democracy with liberal education in her short book NOT FOR PROFIT: WHY DEMOCRACY NEEDS THE HUMANITIES (2010). She has her heart in the right place. But her book is not equal in import to Dewey's.

In the prestige culture in American culture today, philosophy, including the American tradition of pragmatic philosophy, is prestigious.

As a result, books about the history of philosophy are usually considered to be more prestigious than books about the history of rhetoric are, regardless of whether they focus on the history of rhetorical theory or the history of the actual practice of orators and oratory.

However, I would invite you to try a thought experiment. How many professional American philosophers can you think of who had a big impact on and deeply influenced American culture?

Next question: Did they exercise that influence by becoming orators in the public arena (e.g., public intellectuals), or by staying in the ivy tower and publishing only professional publications? (Arguably professional publications may be an important and worthwhile investment of time and energy and resources. So I am not speaking against professional publication.)

Now, how many American orators, including of course politicians and preachers and public intellectuals, can you think of who had a big impact on and deeply influenced American culture?

Figuratively speaking, the lion's share of influence in American culture historically has been exercised by orators. If you want to have influence in American culture, you are going to have to step into the public arena of discourse - the orators' arena.

Let's try another thought experiment. For the sake of discussion, let's say that you have something important that you want to say to your fellow Americans. But your verbal skills in public speaking and written publication are so under-developed that you are not well equipped at expressing yourself at length and communicating. So do you hire a speech writer to write speeches for you, or what?

Because public communication is indispensable for our American experiment in democratic government to have a prayer of a chance of working out well, we need to have American citizens who are trained in communicating their thoughts and views well enough that they can confidently speak out in the public arena of discourse in American culture. So the verbal arts should be an integral part of American formal education in primary, secondary, undergraduate, and professional graduate education.

Like Nussbaum, Zakaria has his heart in the right place. But his short new book IN DEFENSE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION (2015) does not equal in import Dewey's book DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION (1916). Zakaria's book is not likely to influence such a pragmatist as President Obama.

For further reading about the history of the verbal arts in formal education in Western culture, see Walter J. Ong's perceptive book RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (2nd ed., 2004; 1st ed., 1958). Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was a French logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr. His work in logic dominated the curriculum at Harvard College, which was founded in 1636. In theory, if you followed Ramus' method, you would concentrate on developing your own line of thought logically, but without taking into account any real or imagined adversarial positions. In practice, it is hard to avoid adversarial positions and/or objections to one's own position.