The New Education

Davidson argues persuasively that student-centered, active learning can transform classrooms and even online courses. … Davidson’s enthusiasm and her examples should inspire creativity from a lot more college teachers.

I am aware that I cannot do justice to the merits of this book, let alone capture the depths of Davidson’s insights, in a few thousand words, but I do think I can make enough points sufficiently to warrant why readers should commit themselves to examining this volume, sharing it with others, and most importantly help to enact changes in higher education offered in this work.

At her best, Davidson writes in the tradition of Du Bois and Dewey, a pragmatist tradition that puts inquiry first and sees learning through the potential of the full, complex human beings students can become. If the new education is to be successful, whatever its use of technology, it will build on this tradition — as teachers and students make it their own, adapting it to changing times.

Cathy Davidson’s new book is a manifesto on teaching students — and institutions — how to survive and thrive in the digital age. … Davidson already has proven herself to be something of a contemporary Eliot — or at least visionary.

Davidson asks us to rethink absolutely everything about the university we have inherited from the late nineteenth century, starting with admissions, moving to grades, departments, and majors, and extending even to state funding, student loans, and the trajectories of faculty careers.

Cathy Davidson’s The New Education manages to pull of the neat trick of being relevant and fascinating for both the consumers and the producers of higher education. This is a book that I recommend to every tuition-paying parent and newly-enrolled student, as well a to all who make their living in academe.

The New Education takes a good hard look at the old education, and finds it sorely wanting. Are colleges and universities failing an entire generation of young people? Yes, argues Cathy Davidson, a renowned literary scholar and a leader in higher education reform. This is an important and illuminating book whose argument is driven by a deep knowledge of the past and an even deeper commitment to the future.

It’s Davidson who has a vision for what education could and should be that’s consistent with the traditional values of freedom, opportunity and progress we associate with education.

In an engaging, anecdotal, wide-ranging look at educational innovation, [Davidson] argues that students ‘need new ways of integrating knowledge,’ … Today’s students, writes the author, need skills to ready them for ‘intellectual space travel.’… A persuasive plea for creative learning.

She pulls no punches and writes in a style that challenges and encourages in equal measure. She is a doyen of the progressive education movement, and her ideas are far reaching and influential

Read it. And change the world! If you are an academic or a student or an administrator, begin with college.

Cathy Davidson offers us an inspiring and lucid explanation of how we got the educational system we have and how to build the one our students and our country needs and deserves. A must read for those interested in higher education.

American colleges will fail kids without these 5 crucial upgrades.

This critique details much wrong in US HE but also sketches a plan for reform.

The New Education compels us to equip our students with creative new tactics for navigating the volatile present. Grounded in a deep understanding of both historical and current crises in education, Davidson challenges us to reinvigorate and reconsider our approach to reform.

The New Education offers valuable reflections on ways educators can reexamine approaches to preparing young women and men for a rapidly evolving modern world. Grounded in decades of classroom experience and scholarly inquiry, Cathy Davidson makes a compelling case for educators to interrogate traditional structures in higher education, and help students seek, in her words, ‘a sustained and productive life.'

I found the book to be a succinct (it isn’t long), interesting (particularly the historical perspectives on problems that plague us today), practical (so many references and case studies of success!) guide to the big problems in universities. The book is also written in a funny and light-hearted way, despite the gravity of some of the issues that are discussed. I’d strongly recommend it to all HE colleagues, and especially to staff in managerial positions. We’re the ones who need to make the change.

In her book The New Education, Davidson emphasizes the importance of higher education as a place of transformation for students, making the role of the teaching in the academy a critical one. Tracing the evolution of the university from the seventeenth century through today, Davidson … argues that our contemporary world has moved far beyond the nineteenth-century paradigms that the current university was designed for, and that it’s past time for colleges and universities to evolve as well.