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He is right that the current model of academia is not really working anymore, and it is still based on the 19th and early 20th-century model. I wish he offered some ideas for solutions to these problems, but it is a great starting point for discussion. With the economy in the garbage, perhaps one good thing is that there will probably be other routes to "professionalization" besides a college degree.
Review : To anyone who has spent time on the inside, as they say, The Marketplace of Ideas is alternately bracing and chilling There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Louis Menand wrote about James and his pragmatist colleagues in his Pulitzer-prize winning study "The Metaphysical Club" which broadly examines changes in American intellectual life during the period of roughly -- It encourages students to think for themselves. The situation does not admit of a ready answer. Menand notes that a PhD in the humanities surely cannot be required in order to teach undergraduates because graduate assistants teach undergraduates as part of their curriculum. I loved this book.
This book is a good look into the world of academia and particularly at the humanities. The university system and its curricula in the United States went through a great transformation in the late nineteenth century, and this system is still inplace for the most part. The first chapte deals with the idea of the need for a core curriculum that each undergraduate liberal arts student should take. Some colleges put a great stock in this, Colubmia and Harvard being noteworthy and where Menand has taught.
As a side note, when I was choosing a college in the early 's, I specifically chose a college without a core curriculum, University of Pennsylvania. The second chapter deals with the "Humanities Revolution. The third chapter deals iwth interdisciplinarity and anxiety. Menand questions this development and sees a great deal of frustration among his colleagues.
I see interdisciplanrity as a great corrective to the narrowness of much advanced academic study.
I can see the improvement in non-fiction relatd to this. The Annales School of France is a trenchant example of how history has become more interesting to read. The final chapter deals with how the politics of among many professors are so similar, and are generally liberal or left-wing comared to the populace as a whole. A good read. Menand's history of the development of core curricula at Columbia and Yale is the book's greatest strength.
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The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University ( Issues of Our Time) [Louis Menand] on giuliettasprint.konfer.eu *FREE* shipping on. Why, in short, are problems that should be easy for universities to solve so The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University.
You can go to cart and save for later there. Average rating: 3. As the culture and economy change, what are the prospects for change within the university?
He begins his new book with this challenge: How do you create a general education program required by all undergraduates? Rather than argue for any particular set of classes or distribution requirements, Menand describes the evolution in this country of a model in which the college years have been kept separate from anything that resembles vocational or professional training. At the heart of a core curriculum are the humanities -- and Menand charts some of the major changes that have taken place in this field.
About 20 years ago, post-structuralism, cultural studies and deconstruction shook up departments of literature, history and philosophy, but Menand emphasizes that this was all part of the normal jockeying for attention and power among insiders. The more fundamental changes happening in the humanities and for universities in general, he says, were demographic and professional ones.
From to , the number of undergraduates in the U. Professional allegiances during this period became much more important to faculty than school spirit, and the emphasis on specialized research increased greatly.
Sure, some teaching was still required, but professional validation came from increasingly focused publications. Professionalization through an emphasis on specialized, sometimes esoteric research continues today. Even when faculty members attack their own departments, they are still playing the professional game. If the veneer of iconoclasm helps you get published, then you can ride this radicalism until you get tenure or even get appointed chair of an interdisciplinary program.
Well, they are, although most are mainstream in their politics. But the real reason professors tend toward conformity is a training system that reinforces the status quo.