This essay was originally published in February 2023. In conjunction with the forum on higher education that is taking place at Current this week, we are re-running it, as it addresses a topic significant for conversations about education right now....
In his 2010 book about higher education, The Marketplace of Ideas, Louis Menand writes that: “In a meritocratic society, citizens need a common fund of knowledge, a kind of cultural lingua franca, to prevent politically dangerous divisions from developing.” This...
Here is community college dean Matt Reed at Insider Higher Education: Love of reading isn’t all puppies and unicorns, of course. We have a frightening number of books in the house, both on display and in boxes in the basement....
Yesterday in Created and Called for Community we read an excerpt from John Henry Newman‘s “What is a University,” a chapter in his 1852 book The Idea of a University. Newman wrote this book while serving as rector of Catholic...
What’s an education for? University of Connecticut English professor Gina Barreca answers in her recent op-ed: An education is about learning things you don’t know. Just as we need to try foods we’ve never eaten before, we need to approach...
Steven Mintz of the University of Texas has some good ideas to get more students engaged in the study of the history through the required survey course. Here are some of them: Thematically Organized Surveys: One striking example at the...
James Mueller Today we start a new series here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home called “Dispatches From the History Major.”  These weekly posts will be written by sophomore Messiah College history major James Mueller.  Some of you who read...
