Like Shooting Rapids in the Dark : Selected Writings on Education

by WIREMAN BILLY

• ISBN13: 9781588380883
• ISBN10: 1588380882
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: John F Blair Pub

Summary

No issue is more central to the American experiment today than education. And few people know more about education than Billy O. Wireman, the recently retired president of Queens College (Charlotte, North Carolina). In these selections from his writing and thinking spanning forty years in the field in which he has become internationally known as an educational visionary, Wireman communicates an intense sense of where American education needs to go and a keen sense of how to get there. He writes about education not as a disembodied abstraction but from the perspective of one person who has thought about it, lived within it, and put it into practice. Modest, self-deprecating, and self-critical, Billy O. Wireman personifies passion for students, teachers, and education. Anyone seriously interested in education -- and that should be every American -- will profit from Billy Wireman's insights, arguments, and vision.

Author Biography

Dr. Robert Whalen is the Carolyn G. and Sam H. McMahon, Jr., Professor of History and chair of Queens College's history department. He has been teaching at Queens since 1983 Dr. Richard Goode is the McMahon Professor of English and chair of Queens College's English department. He joined the Queens faculty in 1978

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 9
Introduction	p. 11
Why Not Join the College Community?	p. 27
Educate for Freedom	p. 30
The Seedbed of Creative Activity	p. 33
Search Is an Active Verb	p. 35
Disappointment at the World's Fair	p. 37
Listen in Order to Learn	p. 39
Developing Carriers and Creators	p. 42
The Power of Unarmed Truth	p. 45
The College's Central Objective	p. 47
The Idea of Freedom's Time	p. 49
A Vacuum Begging to be Filled	p. 50
The Alchemy of Human Knowledge	p. 53
Understanding the Nature of Learning	p. 55
The Essence of Responsible Citizenship	p. 57
Profile of a Volunteer	p. 60
Connecting "Liberal" and "Arts"	p. 64
Contrast of Haves and Have-Nots	p. 66
Money Isn't Everything for Schools	p. 67
A Process of Becoming	p. 70
A Community of Scholars	p. 72
Stumbling from Crisis to Crisis	p. 76
Declare War on Ancient Enemies	p. 78
Linchpins of a Free Society	p. 81
Of Poets and Architects	p. 83
Building Authority from Within	p. 84
To Rebuild Confidence in Education	p. 86
Four Characteristics of a Just Society	p. 88
Someone Questioned the Status Quo	p. 90
The Defense Against Bad Ideas	p. 91
A Declaration of Education	p. 93
The Risk of the Too-Narrow Mission	p. 96
Why Queens College Is Important	p. 98
Focus on the Human Need	p. 100
To Serve, Not Survive	p. 102
The Higher Education Identity Crisis	p. 103
Begin with the Vision	p. 106
On Reason, Wisdom, Justice, and Love	p. 107
Avoiding the New Illiteracy	p. 109
To Manage Change Proactively	p. 111
The Case for Multicultural Education	p. 116
The Key to Democratic Prosperity	p. 118
America's Third Frontier	p. 122
Productive Careers and Noble Lives	p. 124
Presidential Effectiveness	p. 137
Becoming Change Agents	p. 139
What Is a University For?	p. 142
Be a Thermostat, Not a Thermometer	p. 148
Creators and Carriers of Tradition	p. 151
The Relevance of Liberal Education	p. 153
Epilogue	p. 157
Acknowledgments	p. 160
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