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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American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years.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.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• 1 Coming to America(p. 15)
• 2 A Brief History of Liberal Education(p. 40)
• 3 Learning to Think(p. 72)
• 4 The Natural Aristocracy(p. 106)
• 5 Knowledge and Power(p. 135)
• 6 In Defense of Today's Youth(p. 150)
• Notes(p. 171)
• Acknowledgments(p. 201)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

As politicians in high office publicly question the value of a humanities degree, and Moody's Investor Service continues to downgrade the credit ratings of many top-ranked liberal arts colleges, it seems liberal education is under attack as never before. Into the scrum steps Zakaria (columnist, the Washington Post; The Post-American World). The book's first half consists of an educational autobiography, recounting Zakaria's pivotal decision in the 1970s to travel from India to the United States for college. This is followed by a much weaker chapter on the history of liberal education (which, as the author freely admits, is drawn almost entirely from a single source: Bruce A. Kimball's prize-winning Orators and Philosophers). Instead of joining the long line of writers who focus on the intrinsic worth of the liberal arts (i.e., that they make us more human), Zakaria adopts a more instrumentalist view. Simply put, he says, a "good liberal education" is the "best way to prepare for today's global economy." As evidence, he relies heavily on the views of various captains of industry: a former CEO of Lockheed Martin turns up frequently, as does current Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Verdict Zakaria, who is both a Yale alum and former trustee, provides so many Yale-centric anecdotes that the text at times takes on the tone of advertising copy. Not a necessary purchase but recommended where there is demand. For those who want to know why liberal education matters, Martha C. Nussbaum's Cultivating Humanity is a far more coherent read.-Seth Kershner, Northwestern Connecticut Community Coll. Lib., Winsted © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Zakaria provides a profound and well-argued defense of a traditional liberal-arts education, in the face of a large push in the United States to devalue and defund it. He does this in part by examining his own education, in both India and the U.S., while also addressing the assumptions, misinformation, and misunderstandings about the liberal-arts education in general. Zakaria provides a strong, energetic reading for the audio version of his book. His narration also benefits from his sense of emphasis and pacing. The weight of the subject is evident in his voice, and he navigates the complex issues deliberately, helping listeners better understand the text. His light Indian accent also makes the narration feel all the more personal and connected to Zakaria's experience and knowledge. A Norton hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Fareed Zakaria was born in Mumbai, India on January 20, 1964. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in political science in 1993 from Harvard University.

He was the managing editor of Foreign Affairs before becoming the editor of Newsweek International in 2000. He writes a weekly foreign affairs column in the publication and also has a weekly show on CNN called Fareed Zakaria GPS. Prior to that he worked as a news analyst from 2002 to 2007 on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos and hosted the weekly show Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. He is the author of several books including The Future of Freedom, The Post-American World, and In Defense of a Liberal Education.

(Bowker Author Biography)