This article describes the Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, which, for 30 years, has treated teachers as intellectuals. To that end, the nonprofit educational organization offers teachers from all grade levels and all disciplines an experience that either reacquaints them with or introduces…

Are the humanities relevant enough to the average undergraduate to be included as a required part of a general education program? The University of Idaho (UI) is currently ten years into the challenge of implementing a cross-disciplinary, university-wide general education program--the UI Core--that has the attention, if not always the support, of…

This article is an autobiographical account of a remarkable childhood. In this essay, David Steiner, the Klara & Larry Silverstein Dean of the School of Education at Hunter College in New York, chronicles his early years and his road to Oxford. David is the son of George Steiner, the polymath who has scathingly denounced Western societies for the…

Although No Child Left Behind (NCLB) might have left an impression that only standardized tests and adequate yearly progress (AYP) mattered on the general public, the frustration over the narrow curricular focus also has created an opportunity in the education-policy realm, sparking conversations on what it takes to educate the whole child. This…

Designed to serve as a record of the initial public activity of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Program in Humanities Curriculum Development, this collection of three articles offers different perspectives on the humanities in the schools. In the first article, "The Humanities and Public Education," Stanley N. Katz discusses the…

A recent Rockefeller Foundation report concluded that a lively life in the humanities depended on vigorous engagement with reading, writing, and cultures. Collaboratives for Humanities and Arts Teaching (CHART), created to foster humanistic education, targets classrooms of average students from impoverished urban and rural districts. Such…

Suggests that the perspectives developed by humanities as part of education in science, technology, and medicine can offer enrichment in ways that lead to both use and delight. Sketches some activities at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (ICSTM) in London concerned with liberal education and describes some of the…

Yale University Films' mission to make scholarly ideas more accessible to the general public is about to be realized when they broadcast a film on James Boswell to a national television audience. The movie is based on the journals of the eighteenth century Scottish diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson. (MLW)

Reed College, a small, liberal arts college with high academic distinction, is described. Faculty participate in virtually all policy decisions and are hired and promoted according to the quality of their teaching. Its finances are improved, but it is still underfinanced and too heavily dependent on tuition income. (MLW)

Six undergraduate humanities courses and programs with a variety of structures and focuses are described, and sources of further information are given. (MSE)

Three articles are presented which concern college reading instruction. Karen Pelz describes an intensive approach to teaching reading and writing which entails: (1) special classes for underprepared students; (2) standard administration of freshman reading tests; (3) teaching reading and writing together; (4) using the same instructor to teach…

This report describes the development over three trial semesters of a required course for sophomores at Baker University (Kansas) to develop reasoning and critical thinking skills that would prepare them for a required senior capstone course. The report describes the work of the faculty team that prepared two textbooks ("Reasoning and…

An approach to developing college students' critical thinking skills, designed for freshman composition students but adaptable for other disciplines, is outlined. Components include: establishing bounds of analysis; using bibliography to foster scholarship; capitalizing on emotional response; learning the genre to be analyzed by writing in it;…

At present, there appear to be only two prerequisites for entry into a music teacher education program at most institutions: a minimum academic grade point average and sufficient musical competence to be admitted to the school of music. These seem overly minimal, and serious suggestions have been made regarding additional essential requirements.…