Customer Reviews

America Goes to College

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America Goes to College is a strong collection of essays -- not all of which are pertain specifically to the liberal arts college life -- whose varying subject matter is a delight to read. Above all, they aim to convince us that in a world that is becoming evermore specialized and technical, liberal arts educations should not be phased out, but rather they should be encouraged. Specialization breeds separation, and in turn society is losing its common ground. Be it engineers and English profs or Democrats and Republicans or even Western capitalists and Islamic fundamentalists, the current trend pits those with different perspectives against each other and unwilling to relate. Liberal arts educations work against this problem, for they encourage dabbling in non-career related pursuits--from the physics major in the studio art class to the political theory prof playing sax in the band--and thus help to create a common forum of interaction and experience. Writes Seery:

"I want you to evangelize, I want you to spread the word. If you can't find passion and conviction about what went on here, you will never awaken to the rest of life. So hereby, starting today with you, I pronounce the next century to be the Pomona Century. You've got to make it happen. If you must, make Pomona College and liberal arts education into a religion. Let only the eager, thoughtful, and reverent leave here. This is a community of faith" (Seery 152).

More to the point, Prof. (or should it be Rev.?) Seery wants to evangelize the gospel of the Liberal Arts. In a world that is becoming more and more specialized, Seery believes in the necessity of developing well-rounded individuals who are just as capable of advancing a discussion on cell biology as they are of advancing one on Islamic fundamentalists. As Seery sees it, why not take tangents in our education? America Goes to College opts to celebrate the non-specialist rather than sneer at them, as he accuses many university scholars of doing.
As a professor of political science (and in such capacity, a self-proclaimed guardian of the liberal arts tradition), he notes that he nevertheless finds himself teaching classic texts in order institute an awareness of precedence and develop a more rounded agreement of thought. Students, explains Seery, benefit from an education that attempts to offer a more comprehensive view of the life, rather than to focus on a narrow track and ignore everything else as "not what I'm majoring in."

Particularly important, writes Seery, is the small classroom, in which student-professor dialogues, as well as student-students ones, are more apt to occur and develop. University-style lectures promote order-taking; the liberal arts education promotes the self-directing graduate, the one who is capable of taking his education, and then his life, into his own hands. The goal is of a liberal arts education is to learn the ability and understand the value of seeing the full panorama, not just the point straight ahead. In a world in which too many people increasingly carry themselves like horses with blinders over their eyes, Seery's America Goes to College is a welcome vision.

Much in the same way that the apostles probably wouldn't have bothered to read the Bible, having heard the good word straight from the horse's (Jesus's) mouth I have yet to read this book. That said, I am at this moment taking Professor Seery's Classical Political Theory class at Pomona College, and find it scintillating. The class, not the man...i mean...ughhh...must not succumb to metrosexuality...

I think I'm going to check this book out of the library, now that I've got all worked up about it. But I recommend that you--yeah, YOU--buy it off Amazon!