The Student: A Short HistoryFrom the president of Wesleyan University, an illuminating history of the student, spanning from antiquity to Zoom "[Roth] has a clear vision for what it ought to mean to be a student: Learn what you love to do, get better at it, and then share it with others."--David Perry, Washington Post In this sweeping book, Michael S. Roth narrates a vivid and dynamic history of students, exploring some of the principal models for learning that have developed in very different contexts, from the sixth century BCE to the present. Beginning with the followers of Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus and moving to medieval apprentices, students at Enlightenment centers of learning, and learners enrolled in twenty-first-century universities, he explores how students have been followers, interlocutors, disciples, rebels, and children becoming adults. There are many ways to be a student, Roth argues, but at their core is developing the capacity to think for oneself by learning from others, and thereby finding freedom. In an age of machine learning, this book celebrates the student who develops more than mastery, cultivating curiosity, judgment, creativity, and an ability to keep learning beyond formal schooling. Roth shows how the student throughout history has been someone who interacts dynamically with the world, absorbing its lessons and creatively responding to them. |
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academic African American Allan Bloom American apprentice apprenticeships arts autonomy became become Bloom Cambridge campus century Charles Rollin classroom college students Confucian Confucius create critical culture curriculum dents economic educa elite Emerson Encyclopédie Enlightenment Europe Euthyphro experience faculty Fisk follow fraternities freedom German girls goal graduate Hart Harvard Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz hierarchies higher education human Humboldt Ibid idea immaturity independence institutions intellectual interlocutors Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jesus junzi Kant Kant’s knowledge learners lessons liberal literacy living Margaret Murray Mario Savio master means meant medieval modern numbers one’s path philosopher Plato political practice professors questions Ralph Waldo Emerson Rollin Rousseau skills slave social society Socrates someone sorority teacher teaching Theodote things thinking for oneself thought tion trade tradition undergraduates understand University Press W.E.B. Du Bois wanted women wrote Xenophon York young Zigong Zilu