What is the point of good education? Should we learn limited skills needed to advance in the workplace, or should we use knowledge and learning throughout our lives to gain wisdom that allows us to think more deeply about our place in the world? Is not it?
These questions resonate deeply at a time of angry division in American politics and moral turmoil at America's elite universities. Harvard University President Claudine Gay has resigned after months of campus unrest and controversy. In December, Mr. Gay and two other university presidents faced widespread criticism for their testimony at a Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism on campus.
In this episode, “How Do We Fix It?”, we hear from university educators who argue for a liberal education that provides students with the tools they need to develop a deeper sense of purpose. Roosevelt Montas is the author of Saving Socrates: How Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter to a New Generation.
He believes that the ideas and writings of Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare, Gandhi, and many others are not just for a few privileged students. They are for everyone, and his encounter with these thinkers as a poor immigrant teenager changed his life.
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Mr. Montas is a senior lecturer in American studies and English at Columbia University and director of the Center for American Studies' Liberty and Citizenship Program, which introduces early books on moral and political ideas to low-income high school students. He also presents seminars such as “Freedom and Civil Rights in the United States.” From 2008 until 2018, he served as Director of the Columbia University Core Curriculum Center.
“There is a pervasive cultural attitude that liberal education, such as the study of literature and philosophy, is appropriate only for the elite,'' President Roosevelt said. “It's a really harmful idea.” He argues that the students who benefit most from the fundamental wisdom of the “great books” are from poor, marginalized backgrounds.
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