A renowned professor of English at the University of Virginia, Edmundson has felt firsthand the pressure on colleges to churn out a productive, high-caliber workforce for the future. Yet in these essays, which have run in places such as Harper’s and the New York Times, he reminds us that there is more to education than greater productivity. With prose exacting yet expansive, tough-minded yet optimistic, Edmundson argues forcefully for the importance and relevance of the liberal arts today. The essays in Why Teach?, several previously unpublished, show that higher education, far from being a staid notion, is a necessary remedy for our troubled times.
“An inspiring vision of the liberal arts as a vehicle for personal transformation.” —Tom Perotta, author of Little Children and The Leftovers
In this important book, acclaimed author and professor Mark Edmundson reconceives the value and promise of reading. He enjoins educators to stop offering up literature as facile entertainment and instead teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. At once controversial and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read.
“Edmundson’s many-faceted argument is forthright, rigorous, and inspiring as he convincingly links literature with hope, and humanism with democracy.” —Booklist