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Because It's Good for You: An Argument for History of Education in Liberal Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Karen Graves*
Affiliation:
Denison University, Granville, Ohio

Extract

Whatever we determine a good education to be, and a well-educated person to be, our teachers should be that and no less—not because they are teachers but because they are persons.

“This is what college is supposed to be like!” That is what I thought before I was too far along in my EPS 201 course, “Social Foundations of American Education,” at the University of Illinois. I was a transfer student, and it was my first semester at the university. The professor was Paul Violas and my teaching assistant (TA) was Steve Tozer; the course was a survey of the history of education in the United States. I recall one day we had a guest lecture by Professor James Anderson, who drew material from a new book he was working on. What we learned in EPS 201 was substantial. It was, far and away, the most meaningful course in my undergraduate education. It was, also, the most significant preparation I had as a secondary school mathematics teacher.

Type
Critical Essay in the History of American Education
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 History of Education Society 

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References

1 Tozer, Steven E., “The Liberal Education of Teachers: Remarks on the Holmes Agenda,” Visual Arts Research 14, no. 1 (1988): 24.Google Scholar

2 The book was Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Tozer, , “The Liberal Education of Teachers,” 24.Google Scholar

4 Goodchild, Lester F. and Spencer, John P., “Teaching the History of Education in the USA: A National Report on Its Decline in the 50 States and How We Can Revive It,” Presented at the History of Education Society, Nashville, 1 November 2013.Google Scholar

5 Cronon, William, “'Only Connect…': The Goals of a Liberal Education,” The American Scholar 67, no. 4 (1998): 74.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 76.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 77.Google Scholar

9 Ginsberg, Rick and Levine, Arthur, “New Standards Will Demand a Lot More of Teacher Education,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 October 2013. http://chronicle.com/article/Demanding-a-Lot-More-of/142275/?cid=at (accessed 29 October 2013).Google Scholar

10 Keller, Bill, “An Industry of Mediocrity,” The New York Times, 20 October 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/opinion/keller-an-industry-of-mediocrity.html (accessed 29 October 2013).Google Scholar

11 Ibid.Google Scholar

12 Ginsberg, and Levine, , “New Standards.”Google Scholar