The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do about It

The liberal arts are dying. They are dying because most Americans don’t see the point of them. Americans don’t understand why anyone would study literature or history or the classics—or, more contemporarily, feminist criticism, whiteness studies, or the literature of postcolonial states—when they can get an engineering or business degree.

Even more concerning is when they read how “Western civilization” has become a term of reproach at so many supposedly thoughtful institutions; or how fana...