It is the responsibility of humanists and those who value humanistic knowledge to make the most of two opportunities: (1) to bring about real, lasting, and vigorous reform in the schools at all levels and (2) to see that the humanities are a strong and persuasive force in that movement. (Author/MSE)

This collection of essays seeks to help readers understand why the humanities still matter and celebrates its author's 20-year tenure as Executive Director of the Texas Council for the Humanities (TCH). The collection is organized into three parts. Essays in each part are in chronological order. Part 1 includes addresses, essays, and congressional…

Discusses the future of the humanities in American institutions of higher learning, including the role of elementary and secondary schools in raising academic standards. (AM)

Recognition of the role and value of the liberal arts and humanities curriculum to career education is thwarted by a much too simplistic, impoverished view of the ingredients involved in the performance of one's vocational responsibilities. (JD)

Examines attempts to save humanities education by making it instrumental to other ends. Argues that, rather than finding ways to appease an unsympathetic audience, humanities programs must act without apology and accentuate the role the humanities plays in humanizing and liberating students through self-criticism and self-revision. (Contains 16…

The fragmentation and ineffectiveness of the humanities as cultural force is attributed to historical and social pressures affecting contemporary society and to failure of humanists in higher education to preserve and articulate consensus about proper goals and vocation. An approach to solidarity and direction in humanities lies in viewing them as…

The brief history of the American Association for the Advancement of the Humanities, a general membership organization for people from all fields, types of work, and institutions related to the humanities, is chronicled, and the conditions and factors affecting its successes and failures are discussed. (MSE)

Traces the roots of the concepts of the humanities and liberal arts education to the ancient Greeks, describing how their customs, language, philosophy, and literature have contributed to current concepts of education. Suggests that the Greek idea of education stressed the arts and mathematics but was opposed to all professionalism. (MAB)

Interdisciplinary work across the humanities and social sciences is moving beyond analysis of any one nation in isolation and instead placing urgent questions in the larger matrix of the Americas as a hemisphere. But little attention has been given to the overarching methodological, institutional, and pedagogical issues resulting from the growth…

This paper examines the problems involved in subject retrieval from full-text databases of secondary materials in the humanities. Ten such databases were studied and their search functionality evaluated, focusing on factors such as Boolean operators, document surrogates, limiting by subject area, proximity operators, phrase searching, wildcards,…

It is indeed a problem, perhaps even a crisis, that many Americans are ignorant of "The Tempest," the Civil War, the location of the Persian Gulf, the Constitution, or the chief justice of the Supreme Court. However, if conservative humanists continue to ostracize, scorn, and ignore both media studies and the media themselves, the result will not…

Designed as a forum for discussion of substantive issues in humanities disciplines and the place of the humanities in higher education, this journal offers articles, book reviews, and reports covering a variety of humanities-related topics. This issue contains: (1) "The Feasibility of Educational Change," by Richard Ekman; (2) "The Humanities and…

Responding to the Colorado State Board of Education's request for recommendations concerning the need to improve humanities instruction and its relationship to the development of higher-order thinking skills, this task force report specifies a scope for humanities teaching; defines higher-order thinking skills as the ability to judge information,…

The mass media and especially television pose problems for teachers in humanities disciplines traditionally associated with leisure, time for reflection, and the quiet contemplation of the good, true, and beautiful. Although other media have been criticized for their deleterious effects, television most affects humanists in their mission because…