Many Americans believe that we should concentrate on “practical” education that prepares people for work. Someone who disagrees and sees great value in a liberal-arts education is Hillsdale history professor Wilfred McClay. For the Martin Center, he reviews a recent book by John Agresto, The Death of Learning.

Writes McClay, “Agresto is a learned man but also a thoroughgoing American democrat, born into a working-class immigrant family from Brooklyn, which did not place a high premium on reading and education. He had to acquire his learning by hard labor, a process that has left him immune to the snobbery and preciousness that sometimes undermine defenses of the liberal arts.”

A liberal-arts education does more than just have students read certain books — it instils certain traits in their minds, traits that are critical to the success of our civilization. It also liberates them from the grip of ideologies designed to turn them into unthinking cogs in a machine.