Drowning in Information While Starving for Wisdom: A Review of In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria

Zakaria, Fareed. In Defense of a Liberal Education. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2015. 208 pages. $23.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-393-24768-8.

Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) in Brooklyn, NY, is an educational collaboration between the New York City’s board of education, City University of New York, and IBM. The school received a visit President Obama in 2013 and a mention in that year’s State of the Union address. And in June 2015—less than one month after the final graduation and closing of Sweet Briar College¹—P-TECH graduated its first six students with both high school and associates degrees, and real-world experience thanks to internships at IBM. Rashid F. Davis, founding principal of P-TECH, recently reflected on his school’s founding philosophy: “It’s all about ‘how do you make sure our citizens, our students, our young people, are best prepared to have the opportunities to succeed?’”²

Some education watchers have a more pointed question, asking instead whether soon “the term ‘liberal arts’ will be eclipsed by ‘Tech Arts’?”³

Not if Fareed Zakaria can help it. In his new book In Defense of a Liberal Education, Yale- and Harvard-educated journalist Zakaria lays out a brief history of liberal education—liberal referring to the Latin “of or pertaining to free men”⁴—a history that he admits has gotten lost in translation over the past century.

Zakaria cites an 1828 report issued by the Yale faculty that, while originally intended to argue for classical curriculum and against the pressure to incorporate “modern” languages and subjects, defends the most important foundation of any education—first learning how to think. “The Yale report,” writes Zakaria, “explained that the essence of liberal education was ‘not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of the professions; but to lay the foundation which is common to them all.’ It described two goals in terms that still resonate: training the mind to think and filling the mind with specific content.”⁵ For today’s youth, he argues, those labeled “The Me Me Me Generation” in a 2013 Time cover story, learning to think outside of oneself—to be broadened by a liberal education—is more important than ever.

Zakaria quotes E. O. Wilson for his epigraph: “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”⁶ Digital and media literacy scholars, staff of and contributors to this journal included, regard “the ability to access, share, analyze, create, reflect upon, and act with media and digital information”⁷ as the critical skill set of the 21^st century. Zakaria argues that this type of literacy is the cornerstone of an evolved liberal education. (He prefers liberal education to liberal arts and believes the sciences should not be lost to the discussion, even colloquially.) While information—both factual and how-to—is easily obtained from books or search engines, today’s “crucial challenge is to learn how to read critically, analyze data, and formulate ideas—and most of all to enjoy the intellectual adventure enough to be able to do them easily and often.”⁸

Proponents of liberal education therefore have more in common with proponents of hybrid schools like P-TECH than many may recognize. P-TECH is lauded for graduating “young people who are now able to competitively enter the professional world with tangible STEM-centric skills”;⁹ Harvard University president Drew Faust claims liberal education “should give people the skills ‘that will help them get ready for their sixth job, not their first job.’”¹⁰ The goal is the same, but the question of how to square the mechanics remains.

As does the issue that university institutions like Harvard, even if they do protect the ideal principles of liberal education in theory, no longer do so in practice. Not to mention the fact that private liberal arts colleges are inaccessible for a vast majority of students, particularly those from middle-class and low-income families who struggle to afford higher education and/or struggle to fit in—culturally if not academically—once on campus.¹¹

Zakaria’s solution is “more—and better—liberal education.”¹² He admits that the implementation of liberal education in today’s American higher education, “an excessively loose structure, diminishing work levels, and low standards,”¹³ falls short of its potential and spends a chapter in praise of new developments, like massive open online courses (MOOCs), that not only revolutionize access to education but also provide a big-data-based feedback loop that could tailor education for each participating student. “MOOCs and similar ventures will have ripple effects across the field of education. They will force teachers to do better, since they will now be measured against the world’s best. They will pressure colleges to contain costs, perhaps focus on the things they do well, and find new ways to enhance productivity. They will make students decide what really matters to them—knowledge, credentials, classroom discussions—and find the best ways to get it.”¹⁴

In Defense of a Liberal Education leaves no doubt that Fareed Zakaria, who originally emigrated to the United States in pursuit of a liberal education, believes passionately in his defense, and he argues it well. There is also no doubt that his philosophy is shared by academics and digital pioneers alike. (Steve Jobs, at an iPad unveiling, once exclaimed that “technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”¹⁵) This book does not claim to be a roadmap or a plan of action for fixing America liberal education. It is a conversation-starter that adds to the debate about modern education, both in op-eds and at water coolers. By citing new models like Yale-NUS college and MOOCs, Zakaria admits that the current system has its fair share of failures. However, as he recently pointed out to one Ivy League admissions officer, “How one responds to and recovers from failure is one of the most important characteristics of an individual, probably one that reveals more about his or her future success.”¹⁶ In Defense of a Liberal Education proves that this belief in individuals extends to institutions and to nations.