Humanities Higher Education: New Models, New Challenges

Abstract

This chapter argues that challenges from outside the university system have run concurrent with challenges from within — about the nature of knowledge, the discipline as a structurer of that knowledge and about the purpose of higher education — by philosophers of education and philosophers of language. It argues that a new model is needed: one that comes from the domain of the Humanities and is based on humanities’ distinct pedagogy. It suggests, moreover, that the construction of such a new model, if based on a clear and appropriate understanding of the relationship of knowledge to skill acquisition in the humanities, can provide a much-needed rationale for Higher Education as a whole.