Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America by Donald N. Levine

by Donald Nathan Levine

It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a liberal education. In Powers of the Mind, former University of Chicago dean Donald N. Levine enriches those resources by proposing fresh ways to think about liberal learning with ideas more suited to our times. He does so by defining basic values of modernity and then considering curricular principles pertinent to them. The principles he favors are powers of the mind - - disciplines understood as fields of study defined not by subject matter but by their embodiment of distinct intellectual capacities. To illustrate, Levine draws on his own lifetime of teaching and educational leadership, while providing a marvelous summary of exemplary educational thinkers at the University of Chicago who continue to inspire. Out of this vital tradition, Powers of the Mind constructs a paradigm for liberal arts today, inclusive of all perspectives and applicable to all settings in the modern world.

Genres: Sociology

Hardcover

First published June 7, 2006

Reviews

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultimately a history lesson of the University of Chicago. Good for that, not what I thought it would be. My fault, not the book's.