Description:
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.Brief description: Donald N. Levine (1931-2015) was the Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where he served as dean of the College from 1982 to 1987.
Review Quotes:
"Powers of the Mind will become an instant landmark in the history and analysis of education in the liberal arts. Donald Levine understands that liberal education is more than the content of a curriculum; liberal education is a set of pedagogies, an approach to assessment and evaluation, and a conception of intellectual and moral development that transcends particular authors and works. He does not stop at description and analysis; he courageously offers a compelling proposal for the reinvention of the pedagogies of the liberal arts for the future. I love this book and look forward to savoring it repeatedly."
--Lee S. Shulman, president, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (7/6/2006 12:00:00 AM)