The essays in this book concern successful experiences with interdisciplinary education during the 1972-73 school year at the Humanities Center in Richmond, Virginia. The first section of the book focuses briefly on the program's seven humanities-related subjects (including the directors of each subject): filmmaking; printmaking; mime, dance and…

This study begins with an effort to place the secondary school humanities education movement in the context of the broad concern of educators with curriculum reform during the past decade. An examination of the instruction programs in secondary school humanities education revealed four major variants: Aesthetic Education, Cultural Epoch, Great…

Suggestions for improving the state of the humanities in two-year colleges are presented, based on the findings of a nationwide study of humanities faculty. Among the policy recommendations are: (1) administrators/faculty leaders should organize lay committees as advisors to humanities programs and should involve humanities instructors with such…

A humanities teacher describes various methods of teaching humanities to the elderly: the reading of autobiographies, group writing exercises, and the taping of a script about students' memories of their pasts. The author encourages the teaching of all subjects to the elderly. (CT)

President Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-grant Act in 1862, launching a nationwide project in public higher education that would build democracy, prosperity, and competitiveness to levels undreamed of 150 years ago. As student costs skyrocket, driven by steep drops in public funding, the viability of that project, like the nation itself, is under…

The teaching of literature is inextricably connected with face-to-face initiation into the enjoyment of and critical thinking about literary texts. In this respect, the increasingly growing sector of Open and Distance Learning in higher education poses a significant challenge for literary studies, no less so as it addresses an emergent student…

In higher education in the United States, teaching and research in the fields of language and literature are in a desperate condition. Laboring on the age-old axiom "publish-or-perish," thousands of professors, lecturers, and graduate students are busy producing dissertations, books, essays, and reviews. Over the past five decades, their…

In this article, the author describes a project designed to take the dread out of discussion in a first-year interdisciplinary humanities course at Sewanee: The University of the South, a private liberal arts college in Tennessee. The Responsible Intellectual Discussion project, known as RID, was created in conjunction with the college's Eloquence…

This paper reports on a needs analysis underlying a proposed business English reading course using a problem-based learning approach designed to enhance English reading abilities of Thai undergraduate students. As part of a work in progress, the needs analysis survey was done prior to the course design with the major stakeholders in business and…

This volume explores the antecedents of E. D. Hirsch's concerns and discusses his ideas and their significance for an arts education curriculum. This book makes recommendations for a comprehensive, five-phase elementary level through secondary level curriculum, suggesting content for an intensive secondary level curriculum. The volume further…

This paper advocates that the humanities retain a place or have primary importance in the education system. It presents a history of philosophic and religious perspectives regarding science and technology, ranging from embracing technology to rejecting it. By juxtaposing the dominance of the Nazi regime in World War II and the increasing flood of…

Materials for a humanities course on America in the 1930's are listed and described. (JH)

Academic curricula in the humanities should lead the student to develop "shared values," which include cultivating the intellect, acquiring critical skills, gaining an understanding of humanity, and learning to make reasoned choices. Toward this goal, the curriculum should strive to preserve the independent quest for truth through textual analysis…

Three major, interrelated areas will be of concern to the humanities in higher education for at least the rest of this decade: economics, the student population, and teachers' professional image. Crises in the national economic situation will continue to have an impact on the humanities in the form of public disinterest and a lack of funding by…

Recognizing that the task of those who teach the humanities is now to identify the common ground on which persons can gather to make responsible judgments about the quality of life in light of past traditions and the competing demands of the future, this collection of essays explores the changing definition of humanistic studies and their current…