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Your Education and the Good Life
This is a sample syllabus adapted from a course I taught at Stanford University from 2022–2024. It was originally developed by the program for Civic, Liberal, and Global Education.
Course Description
With a world of information at our fingertips, many have begun to re-evaluate the value and purpose of a college education. Is it just to train you for a career? Is it worthwhile to take a wide range of courses in topics that won't translate to a post-college job? Is it better to focus on your success in college, or your happiness? And should we think of higher education as a private commodity or a public good? These are just some of the questions that have entered contemporary American discourse.
In this course, students engage with a wide range of historical, philosophical, literary, and artistic sources that offer different perspectives on what higher education should be like. We debate whether these opinions — from Plato to Steve Jobs — are valuable resources for the 21st-century college student. Students draw upon sources from around the world to develop their own theory of how to craft a meaningful higher-education experience.
Course Schedule
Week 1: What is a liberal education?
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Week 2: Is education revolutionary?
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Plato, "Allegory of the Cave"
Week 3: How does an education liberate?
Rabindranath Tagore, "The Problem of Education" and "The Unity of Education" in Towards Universal Man
Rokeya Hossain, "Sultana's Dream"
Week 4: What are the ethical and social costs of education?
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
Week 5: Do we learn through discipline or relaxation?
Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try
The Analects of Confucius, selections
The Zhuangzi, selections
Week 6: Can one learn to love? Or do you have to love what you learn?
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 334
Zadie Smith, "Some Notes on Attunement"
Week 7: What can we draw upon to enrich our knowledge production?
Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Week 8: Why should we bother with writing anymore?
Ted Chiang, "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web", The New Yorker
John McPhee, "Draft No. 4", The New Yorker
Week 9: Is it really so bad to "do nothing" from time to time?
Jenny Odell, "How to Do Nothing"
Week 10: What is the best way to spend your time?
Seneca, "On the Shortness of Life"
Epicurus, The Art of Happiness
Week 11: What is the value of ambition?
dir. David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi
dir. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tick, Tick... Boom!
Week 12: Why so serious? Does play matter?
Steve Jobs' 2005 commencement address at Stanford University
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans Designing Your Life
Week 13: What do you learn by studying abroad?
Kim Liao, Where Every Ghost Has a Name
Week 14: What is AI doing to higher education?
James D. Walsh, "Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through Colleges"
Theo Baker, "What A.I. Did to My College Class"
Week 15: Is college for some good for everyone?
Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of Liberal Education
Gerhard Casper, "The University as Public Service"