摘要
Virtue education in the United States has lost its clout while the corporatization of higher education may be at its peak. The focus of traditional education has shifted from ideas, wisdom, and the love of learning to having a corporate mindset on progress and skills-based knowledge. In many cases, the focus of attention is on remaining viable/sustainable in times of economic decline rather than learning itself, so the resources supporting institutions of higher education are directed into marketing and public relations practices instead of the infrastructure for thinking and learning. This essay draws together three coordinates to make a case for a return to virtue education in the United States. First, the current condition of higher education is shown to have dubiously strayed from a virtue model. Second, the re-emergence of philosophy as a preferred major and its growth in the academy suggest that people realize that something has to change in higher education as they revert back to a broad liberal arts emphasis. Third, a discussion of virtue education from the lens of Josef Pieper＇s virtue philosophy, grounded in the lSta Contemplativa, offers renewed possibility to reengaged higher education for a sustainable future. Together, I suggest that the tradition of higher education in the United States is no longer viable and return to a virtue education model is an alternative that might make higher education sustainable.
