It is a strange and sobering experience to read Hofstadter in our own anti-intellectual era. If anything, left-leaning intellectuals' sense of alienation has increased since the 1990s. To challenge anti-intellectualism in American education, the liberal arts and sciences will need to be restored to their central place in the curriculum.

To love our children may well be to introduce them to the symbolic forms, the historical studies and novels and painting and anthropological accounts that emerge from the past and exist in the present, waiting to be realized, to be known. (Author)

It is essential that teachers of all subjects, vocational as well as academic, strive to achieve a proper balance in the curriculum rather than build up their own specialties at the expense of others. (Author/IRT)

A liberal education should not be judged on the criteria of "knowing that" or "knowing how" but on "knowing with," not on whether a previously learned content can be recited or applied but by the way those learned contents provide contexts or meaning. (Author)

In the present civic environment there is no purpose for liberal education, for an education worthy of free persons, for the simple reason that there is no place for free persons, for citizens in the full sense who engage together, integrally involved in the pursuit of common purposes. (Author)

Philip Pullman's popular fantasy series "His Dark Materials" is sure to arouse the ire of Christian parents if it ever gets used in public schools. Pullman's books contain direct attacks upon Christianity, and Pullman himself admits that his writing attempts to "undermine the basis of Christian belief." Educators must realize that this kind of…

If we can bring ourselves to realize the intimate relationship between liberal and useful knowledge, between traditional and corporate education, we can overcome the mutual prejudice and distrust between university and corporation and tap vast reservoirs of human energy. (Author/IRT)

Separate field of special education needs to continue evolution toward eventual merger with general education. Pete Idstein's December 1993 "Kappan" article, "Swimming against the Mainstream," is an example of systemic weaknesses reflecting need to devise more substantial system of education for all. Like Ronald Doe, too many students and teachers…

Education's purpose is to cultivate minds and characters, affirm ethical normality, and help young people develop moral and intellectual discernment. Such an education demands rigorous examination of and conversations about great literary works from the classical age to the present era. (MLH)

Let us concentrate for a while on specialization and on helping students want to and be able to gain admittance to that choice group of those who have gone some distance beyond the ordinary in their knowledge and skill to the point where that subject has become liberal. (Author/IRT)

Too many high school teachers and administrators overlook non-college-bound students' needs. To prevent the United States from becoming a two-class society, high schools should adopt a bifurcated administrative structure with two major curriculum-planning divisions: one to prepare students for college and another to prepare students for community…

Mexico and the United States have reached a number of agreements designed to improve the literacy and education of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Programs offered by the Mexican government are continuing to expand because of scarce funding for education in the United States. The Program for Mexican Communities Abroad supplies Mexican…

Argues that pessimism about the future of liberal education reflects unique conditions of the present decade and that the necessary preconditions for a revival of liberal education are present. (Author/IRT)

Minnesota is leading the school choice movement, but Governor Perpich's promotional tours may be somewhat premature. This article examines the open enrollment concept and its consequences, including charges of elitism and application of private enterprise principles to education. Open enrollment contradicts the legislature's duty to establish a…