When Bernadette, my wife, returned from a trip to the Netherlands, she brought me a wonderful gift... a book. She was confident I would enjoy it because it focused on education. This book was In Defense of a Liberal Education* by Fareed Zakaria. Having just finished reading it, I found it quite interesting, especially as I related it to our current times. As I write this, a professor was removed from a plane because he was doing math, and the woman who reported him did not understand what he was doing and thought it was a terrorist act. If this was an isolated incident, I would simply laugh. Unfortunately, it is not. Read more ( )

I am so in love with this book. First of all, I had a different impression of what a "liberal education" was when I picked the book. I thought of it in the "not conservative" way and not so much the liberal arts degree that Zakaria was actually going for. I was always going to be an easy sell on that, having an English degree and all, but now I can talk to others about it better. I really do hate the question of what I plan to do with an English degree.

I listened to the audiobook which was a short three hours and read by the author. Honestly, I can listen to him talk about this for days. I loved the research that he did and a lot of the conclusions. I think my favorite was that even the best technical degree these days was only useful for so long before all the information you learned was outdated. Tech has gotten a bit crazy and I can't imagine trying to decide on a degree that will be obsolete soon while pressured to not get something in the liberal arts.

As I was paying for my degree on my own, my family didn't get to weigh in on what I was getting it in but that doesn't mean it didn't keep them from commenting. They always wondered how I would make good on the expense and investment and then sigh and figure I could always teach if I couldn't be a writer or something. I absolutely do want to become a published author one day but it's not the only reason to get an English degree, neither is teaching. I had never thought of it in terms of learning to think and how lateral learning helps us see the world through a wider lens. It makes sense, though, because my trade is technological and I do feel like I've had some help along the way with how to form an argument and how to describe the problem from some of my English classes.

My favorite thing about the book is Zakaria's defense of the millennial generation. There are so many articles and books out there calling them all sorts of things and he totally tears those ideas to shreds. And he does it be quoting ancient Greeks, which is kind of the best part about it.

Anyone about to go to college should read this book and it wouldn't hurt for those about to send their children to college either. There are some great points to be made and a great value for liberal arts education. ( )

OK, excellent ideas are expressed, but the style of the prose doesn't match the weight of the arguments. ( )

I work at a liberal arts college and I assigned this book to my team for our Summer Read this year.

I read a good deal about liberal arts education, and there was not a ton that was new here for me. That said, I find myself justifying the gift of a liberal arts education often enough (to parents and employers) that I know for certain that there is not a deep understanding of its value here in America. This is especially sad in this moment where we need that combination of broad knowledge and specific expertise, that educational model that makes us able to support liberty, more than ever before. Critical thought, historical context, full sentences, and the educational foundation for innovation, are all things that grow from a good foundation in the liberal arts and all these things are currently in terrifyingly short supply.

Zakaria packs a lot of good material into a quick and zippy read. My frustration over executives who complain that they can't find leaders among their younger workers, and then continue to hire people with technical training rather than those with a liberal education continues apace. That said, with the info from this book and other good resources I know that my team will be able to teach our students (communicators and leaders all) how to "sell" their liberal arts degrees in the marketplace. ( )

I went into this a wee bit confused. By liberal, he meant liberal arts. Not liberal as in progressive, but liberal as in a broad range of studies. He has lots of interesting examples and anecdotes spanning the existence of universities as we would picture them. ( )