Customer Reviews

An Education for Our Time

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Josiah Bunting takes a unique approach to the problems of American education and society in general. A millionaire philanthropist has left funds for the creation of his "dream college".Concerned with the training of mind, body, and soul, this college has as its' main goal the creation of disinterested servants of the nation. I can't praise this book enough. As a teacher, I particularly liked the chapter entitled "Who Shall Lead Them"? The ideas about what defines effective teaching and engaged learning will inspire all teachers even if Generlal Bunting's college never becomes a reality.

Josiah Bunting has written an incredibly thought provoking book on higher education. If you are a parent about to send your child to a Ivy League school, read this book...and weep. This is not the education that your child will receive.

Josiah Bunting, Rhodes Scholar, Vietnam vet, and president of VMI, has written a superb book about the future of American education. One correction of some of the previous reviews is in order, however. Mr. Adams is a LITERARY DEVICE, a fictional character invented by Bunting. Sadly, Adams does not not exist in the real world, or else Bunting would have the money to actually found Adams College.One can only hope that sonme rich idealist sees his or her way to helping Bunting to realize his vision. Failing that, I would urge the next President to make Bunting Secretary of Education. In fact, I would like to see Bunting AS President of the United States. He is clearly equal in character to McCain, and far more intelligent than "shrub' or "plastic man"

I am thrilled that General Bunting has written so very eloquently the feelings of my own heart concerning the state of education in America, particularly at the university level, and the need for young people to be trained and educated after the manner of the Founding Fathers and other great men and women. His dream of creating a school to work to mold and shape willing souls into virtuous, disinterested and noble men and women is what I had been searching for throughout my life. I say 'had' because there does exist a school that is a literal replica of the school discussed in this marvelous book and I happen to be a doctoral student there at this very moment. It is named George Wythe College and is located in Cedar City, Utah. The mission of the school is in perfect alignment with the stated mission in John Adam's writings. So for those that read this book and ask themselves 'If only...'or for parents out there that desire that their children be educated in such a fashion, please realize that John Adam's dream is an actual reality. I have never experienced such happiness and enjoyment with my education as I do now.

In his book, Gen. Bunting outlines the requirements of a New American College. But the ideas are not "new"; they are the very ideas upon which our Great Nation was founded. These are the ideas and values to which our Founding Fathers committed their very lives. The ideas that are presented for the college go much further, though. They speak to the manner in which responsible citizens should participate in life. Gen. Bunting asserts that our patriotism, our religious beliefs, and our personal, professional, and public conduct should all be woven into the the fabric of life, inseparable from each other. The book challenges us, as Americans, to be more than doctors, mechanics, pilots, clerks, and salesmen. As Americans, we are to take an active role in the future of our Nation.

This book should be required reading of all high school seniors and certainly of all people of voting age. My hat is off to Gen. Bunting.

Josiah Bunting has written an incredibly thought provoking book on higher education. If you are a parent about to send your child to a Ivy League school, read this book...and weep. This is not the education that your child will receive.

Suppose you could sit down and write out a new framework for undergraduate education on a clean sheet of paper. That's the task accomplished by Josiah Bunting in "Education for Our Time," an extended essay on education and its goals in the form of a novel.

Here's the plot: A highly successful businessman and entrepreneur, earlier a war hero, knowing he will soon die of cancer, decides to leave his fortune to found a college on a new model. The novel is epistolary, written as a series of letters from "John Adams" to "Robert" and the new institution's trustees. Adams lays out the framework for a five-year undergraduate program for a carefully chosen group of students that aims to develop them into "virtuous and disinterested leaders."

Years 1, 2, and 5 would be spent on campus. During year 3 the students sould spend a full term in language study abroad, and years 2 and 3 would also include internships during scheduled "interims" -- "in positions of the kind considered menial ... assistants in Emergency Admissions facilities in large hospitals; as teaching assistants in the most deprived of our schools; as attendants in nursing homes." Year 4 would be spent in the armed forces. The full experience would also include boxing, treks and marathons. Students would be guided by an honor code.

Along the way Adams/Bunting lays out a philosophy of leadership for a republic, virtue in a free society, the dignified rather than the rich retirement, the role of military service in developing citizens and leaders, the outdoor life, and history's role in an education for leadership. He examines the ideal campus, calendar and curriculum, and the recruitment of teachers and mentors. He walks the reader through his convictions about campus life. When he uses older terms like parietals, refectory, rhetoric, sacramentum (oath), honor, classical, virtue, ardor, sumptuary, and desmesne -- when he cites Shakespeare, Washington, Milton, Newman, Churchill, Plutarch, Spender, Tacitus, and the Psalms, for instance -- he shows his conviction that many of the older fundamentals should be recovered.

"Education for our Time" is, as I said, an extended essay on education. It doesn't outline a formal plan for the new College, but rather expresses Bunting's convictions about human nature, education, and leadership for a democratic society. He believes they should animate any plan for an undergraduate college.

Bunting was a Marine, a 1963 graduate of Virginia Military Institute, a Rhodes Scholar, an Army officer in Vietnam who wrote the celebrated novel "The Lionheads," President of Briarcliff and Hampden-Sydney Colleges, and headmaster of the Lawrenceville School before he became Superintendent of VMI, so he has both learning and experience to bring to bear. Perhaps the greatest benefit from reading "Education for Our Time" is to learn more from the mind of one of America's celebrated educators.

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General Bunting sets forth his ideas for an education that will prepare our students to be "virtuous and disinterested citizens and leaders of the Republic." Were any American college or university to adopt this work as a blueprint for their curriculum and operation, our country's state of being would improve almost overnight simply for gaining such leaders. This book is an absolute "must read" for the educator, historian, and patriot who wishes more for themeselves, their communities, and their country.

Bunting uses the incredibly wonderful "letters" of a billionaire and the "writer" to outline a wonderful vision of what education could be. Because it's embedded in a story, Bunting is able to be much stronger than he might have been able to be in others forms.

This book is both challenging and great to read. I highly recommend it!

I have no financial interest in this book, nor do I know any of the principals personally, but I have been urging friends who have a concern with highher education to read it. It is well written (a welcome relief from the hellebore of college and university presidents) and itself a mirror of the sort of curried mind a superior education should produce. (A small correction to the information put out by the publisher: this book is substantially written by Adams, who is directing the founding of a new college while abed dying; Bunting is effectively the editor.) Given the distance between Utopian invention and realization, I rather doubt Adams's vision will be replicated in Adams College, but any attempt to reify the thought is bound to provide a wondrous example of what our colleges might have striven to achieve.