The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal [Hardcover]

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Arthur Zajonc (Author), Megan Scribner (Author), Mark Nepo (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2010

A call to advance integrative teaching and learning in higher education.

From Parker Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to Teach, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College and director of the academic program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, comes this call to revisit the roots and reclaim the vision of higher education. The Heart of Higher Education proposes an approach to teaching and learning that honors the whole human being—mind, heart, and spirit—an essential integration if we hope to address the complex issues of our time. The book offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and proposals for action from two educators and writers who have contributed to developing the field of integrative education over the past few decades.

• Presents Parker Palmer’s powerful response to critics of holistic learning and Arthur Zajonc’s elucidation of the relationship between science, the humanities, and the contemplative traditions

• Explores ways to take steps toward making colleges and universities places that awaken the deepest potential in students, faculty, and staff

• Offers a practical approach to fostering renewal in higher education through collegiality and conversation

The Heart of Higher Education is for all who are new to the field of holistic education, all who want to deepen their understanding of its challenges, and all who want to practice and promote this vital approach to teaching and learning on their campuses.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Palmer and Zajonc have issued a compelling call for change and renewal in higher education. They show us how colleges and universities can be transformed by taking a more integrated approach to teaching and learning that focuses on the inner lives of their students and faculty.
” —Alexander and Helen Astin, Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA

“At a moment when many are dreaming of an integrative form of higher education that unites intellectual rigor with compassion and love, Palmer and Zajonc invite us to engage in conversations designed to infuse the academy with meaning, purpose, and soul. For those who yearn to transform colleges and universities from sterile, vacuous spaces to places of hope, possibility, and respect for everything human, this is the book you have been waiting for.”
—Laura I. Rendón, professor of higher education, Iowa State University, and author, Sentipensante Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation

“Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc call for a renewal of our commitment to inspiring deeper thinking and educating the whole person. This book should and will inspire debate about our larger purpose, about how we can go beyond the traditional silos in which we work for the sake of individual and institutional transformation.”
—Anthony Marx, president, College

“What should be at the center of our teaching and our students’ learning? Palmer and Zajonc take up this simple but daunting question and provide the most solid ground yet on which to hold a conversation about the heart of our enterprise. They reimagine higher education in a way commensurate with the magnitude of our problems and offer us practical paths toward implementation. Integrative education is the most important reformation of higher learning since the rise of the modern university. This book can help us achieve it.”
—Anthony Lising Antonio, associate professor of education and associate director, Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, Stanford University

“[The book] strikes a welcome balance between theoretical claims and practical applications. I find [it] a worthy read for anyone interested in asking the deeper questions about what it means to educate an undergraduate. I encourage you to find the paragraphs that resonate most deeply with you, and to do the one thing the authors ask of us: have a meaningful conversation about higher education with a few colleagues. For, as they put it, ‘renewal…will germinate first in the soil of these caring and collegial conversations.’”
—Allison Gale, Departmental Teaching Fellow for Earth and Planetary Sciences, for The Bok Blog

From the Inside Flap

The Heart of Higher Education is an invitation to everyone who cares about the academy to revisit its roots and help reclaim its highest calling.

Parker J. Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to Teach and founder of the Center for Courage & Renewal, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics and director of the Center for ContemplativeMind in Society, advocate a holistic approach to teaching and learning that honors the whole human being—mind, heart, and spirit. The Heart of Higher Education offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and action options and models to help colleges and universities become places that awaken the deepest potential in students, faculty, and staff. The authors propose an approach to educational renewal grounded in collegiality and conversation.

The Heart of Higher Education is for all who are new to the field of integrative education, all who want to deepen their understanding of its challenges and prospects, and all who want to practice and promote this vital approach to teaching and learning on their campuses.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (July 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470487909
• ISBN-13: 978-0470487907
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #78 in Books > Education & Reference > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > Philosophy & Social Aspects

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing Back the Heart September 26, 2010

By C. G. Brey

Format:Hardcover

When I saw that Parker Palmer was a collaborator on this book I pre-ordered it immediately. His writing and work have been like a lifeboat for me in both my personal journey and my work as an educator over the course of many years.

I am beginning my ninth year in "higher" education after almost 30 years working with young children and families and my questions have remained consistent. Whether working with the youngest children or graduate students I have been amazed at how the systems that we work within discourage us from considering strategies for the education of the "whole" human. In early childhood education there is an emphasis on language and literacy, fine and gross motor, social and emotional development. In those settings I would ask myself how to acknowledge and reach those more intangible and unmeasurable places in the child: the heart and soul. My work with adult students and colleagues at the University has been the same.

This book tackles the difficult questions and paradoxes of how to create a learning environment in which students are encouraged to cultivate both critical thinking and compassion; mind and heart. The authors do an excellent job of exploring the potential benefits of integrative education and the transformative conversations that may lead us to new ways of teaching and learning together.

If you are interested, like I am, in how to help students learn to "think the world together" rather than "think it apart" in educational settings, then this book is for you.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another cry for reform June 10, 2012

By E. Steven Washington

Format:Hardcover

This book is one of several recent works calling attention to the crisis in American higher education. The authors propose a turn to a more holistic university education in the tradition of the medieval university to challenge and promote the love of learning.
A bachelor's degree is now required for membership in the middleclass yet with grade inflation and teaching deflation undergraduates learn less and less. (See Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.) Forty-five percent of students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills - including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing - during their first two years of college because they are distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list while faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents ignore the situation.

The authors proposea holistic learning with integration of science, the humanities, and the contemplative traditions, in an attempt to make colleges and universities places that awaken the deepest potential in students, faculty, and staff.

This requires a change or return from the administrative university model to the collegial model. Even more, it implies the university as a place only for those with a love of learning - a relatively small portion of today's university students.

5.0 out of 5 stars a good book April 12, 2013

By Loveway

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

My teacher recommended this book to me and said it would be very interesting. I read through it and I think it is a book with soul.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great insight March 11, 2013

By Jon

Format:Kindle Edition

Really great ideas that can be implemented in small colleges and universities. Having open and honest dialogue with colleagues can lead to discovery and innovative ways to provide students with a better education.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great work from this author February 10, 2013

By A&P

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have read a few books by Parker Palmer, and this is still one of my favorites. Lots of good insights.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars The Heart of Higher Education November 20, 2012

By Chris Templar

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Not as good as Palmers other book that I had read. This one seemed very impractical. I do not believe that one could implement the ideas in either a public school or most private schools

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars WHAT EVERY EDUCATOR SHOULD BE ABOUT. April 18, 2011

By Ms. Jo Ann W. Goodson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Parker Palmer, in my opinion, is one of my favorite authors. Education of everyone is a top priority with me. Every child should have at least a high school education and more if possible.

Parker in his book talks about a new way of educating that I think every place of education should follow his teachings.

Have always felt that we missed the boat in higher education in particular in that it was always about the head and not the heart. When people teach they should consider the heart, the whole body and not just the head when they teach.

Parker gives us a new way of teaching that has been tried and proven successful. He gives you examples where his ideas have been applied and been successful and everyone benefits, not just one person.

His methods can also be used in other places other that in schools of higher education. They can be used in churches, businesses, small groups and many other places.

I highly recommend Palmer's methods and in small way I have seen this work myself in small groups, etc.

This is a must read for those who love to learn and how to love and show respect to others in the process as well as to teach others.