Written in the midst of World War II, this book makes a strong argument for the crucial importance of education as the solution to the dilemmas with which our Anglo-Saxon culture was nurtured, with particular emphasis on the work of John Dewey and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Stringfellow Barr, writing for the New Republic, said that this is "A wise and courageous book. I do not know how anybody concerned with education can ignore it.

Established at the University of Wisconsin in 1927 by educational theorist Alexander Meiklejohn, the Experimental College was a small residence-based programme within the university that provided a core curriculum of liberal education of two years of college. This is a record of the experiment.

America's passion for "liberty," writes Alexander Meiklejohn, has blinded her to the real meaning of "freedom." It is freedom, not liberty, that lies at the heart of democracy, and we may be in danger of losing both. Our fetish of independence has permitted us to condone slavery, the betrayal of Indians and Blacks, and "the humiliation of the spirit of women . . . the crowning insult which a society has offered to the personalities of its own members." In this challenging essay, sensitively and scrupulously argued, one of America's most original social philosophers sums up the fallacies that...

Originally published: New York: Harper Brothers Publishers, 1948]. xiv, 107 pp. Reprint of the sole edition.
"Dr. Meiklejohn, in a book which greatly needed writing, has thought through anew the foundations and structure of our theory of free speech . . . he rejects all compromise. He reexamines the fundamental principles of Justice Holmes' theory of free speech and finds it wanting because, as he views it, under the Holmes doctrine speech is not free enough. In these few pages, Holmes meets an adversary worthy of him . . . Meiklejohn in his own way writes a prose as piercing as Holmes,...