Observations upon Liberal Education, the first modern edition, arose from a longing for a liberty of mind and tried to lay the groundwork for a society of free, virtuous, and educated citizens. The work's influence was by no means confined to Scotland. Benjamin Franklin drew generously from the work of Turnbull. The Liberty Fund edition of Observations upon Liberal Education is the first modern edition of this work ever published.

This collection of readings, the first of its kind, has been chosen with a view to displaying the variety, richness and strength of the Scottish philosophical tradition.

An innovative and comprehensive account of the modern university's impact on social and political attitudes.

CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition. The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree." These messages are hitting home: majors like English and history, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline. "I get it," writes Fareed Zakaria, recalling the atmosphere in India where he grew up, which was even more obsessed with getting a skills-based education. However, the CNN host and best-selling author explains why this widely held view is mistaken and shortsighted. Zakaria eloquently expounds on the virtues of a liberal arts education—how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically. He turns our leaders' vocational argument on its head. American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years. Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning—precisely the gifts of a liberal education. Zakaria argues that technology is transforming education, opening up access to the best courses and classes in a vast variety of subjects for millions around the world. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history.

There has always been a strong relationship between education and philosophy - especially political philosophy. Renewed concern about the importance and efficacy of political education has revived key questions about the connections between the power to govern, and the power to educate. Although these themes are not always prominent in commentaries, political writings have often been very deeply concerned with both educational theory and practice. This invaluable book will introduce the reader to key concepts and disputes surrounding educational themes in the history of political thought. The book draws together a fascinating range of educational pioneers and thinkers from the canon of philosophers and philosophical schools, from Plato and Aristotle, down to Edward Carpenter and John Dewey, with attention along the way paid to both individual authors like Thomas Hobbes and Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as to intellectual movements, such as the Scottish Enlightenment and the Utopian Socialists. Each thinker or group is positioned in their historical context, and each chapter addresses the structure of the theory and argument, considering both contemporaneous and current controversies. A number of themes run throughout the volume: an analysis of pedagogy, socialisation, schooling and university education, with particular relation to public and private life, and personal and political power references to the historical and intellectual context an overview of the current reception, understanding and interpretation of the thinker in question the educational legacy of the theories or theorists. This book will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of education, as well as students and teachers of political theory, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy.

The idea of progress stood at the very center of the intellectual world of eighteenth-century Britain, closely linked to every major facet of the British Enlightenment as well as to the economic revolutions of the period. Drawing on hundreds of eighteenth-century books and pamphlets, David Spadafora here provides the most extensive discussion ever written of this prevailing sense of historical optimism.