Beginning in March 2015 I began to write a new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education. This book offers a complete education of the type that every high school student, and for that matter every university student, should want to have. The book offers fourteen chapters covering economics (macro-and micro-), political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature (English and world literature in translation), English usage, fine arts (visual and musical), mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.
Most high school students should graduate with an understanding of these subjects but do not. This is true for most public schools, of which the locally centralized schools district of the Minneapolis Public Schools is a subset, and is true for even well-regarded private schools.
And while university students gain excellent training in their field of focus, sometimes going on to even more specialized training at the professional, master's, or doctoral level, even the best liberal arts curricula do not offer a truly comprehensive education needed to function for high-knowledge citizenry.
Thus, many people look back on courses that they took in high school and college and wish that they remembered more of what they had learned; or they reflect on their educational experiences so as to wish that they had taken courses in the key subject areas given above.
This book offers knowledge to a knowledge-poor citizenry, the latter matter of which is detailed in
Rick Shenkman's Just How Stupid Are We?, findings from which I offer in summary as you scroll down a few articles.
In reading serious articles on various topics with my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, including those that appear on practice ACT exams, I invariably have found myself teaching mini-courses across the range of subjects covered in this new Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education. Writing this volume will have the advantage of making the conveyance of the needed background information much more efficient and complete.
Over the course of the last few months, I have posted snippets from the book on many of the subject areas up through chapter ten. As you scroll down to the very next article on this blog, you will find a snippet from the chapter that I am writing now--- Chapter Twelve, Biology.
Look also for snippets from the chapters on chemistry and physics in the weeks to come, as I endeavor to complete this book before the year 2016 yields to a new annum, 2017.
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