Publication date:
10 May 2000Length of book:
256 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
228x150mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780847699599
Christian Liberal Arts articulates the practical, pedagogical, and theological reasons why Christian liberal arts colleges are distinctive in the world of American higher education. Mannoia enumerates the intrinsic and instrumental values of Christian liberal arts, and how both should forcefully shape an institution's goals. He suggests that Christian colleges should strive to help their students go beyond the extremes of dogmatism and skepticism to achieve critical commitment. Colleges must also aid their students to adjust to real world problems without sacrificing academic quality. Mannoia believes that the solution to this challenge must inevitably integrate multiple disciplines, values and learning, and theory with practice, a process from which both faculty and graduates will acquire the capacity to resolve the thorniest dilemmas facing society and the Christian community.
In the discussions concerning higher education that have filled the press in recent years, the component that's been overlooked is the liberal arts college—particularly the Christian liberal arts college, of which there are hundreds in the U.S. Jim Mannoia here fills that gap with an articulate, deeply informed, slogan-free development of the thesis that the unique task of such institutions is to produce critically committed graduates tackling real world problems. It's the best statement we have of what the Christian liberal arts college could and should contribute to the remarkable pluralism of American higher education.