The academic disciplines and values of the humanities in western cultures run from the Greek trivium--grammar, logic, rhetoric--to modern-day studies in history, philosophy, religious studies, literature, languages, art history, and some interdisciplinary studies. What is their future, and what is their relationship to honors education? Are the…

Those who work in all sectors of higher education--from community and liberal arts colleges to undergraduate programs in public and research universities--often assert that a "liberal education" is precisely the kind of undergraduate education that is needed for both living and working in the challenging 21st-century world. "Liberal education" or…

North Carolina State University's general education program is ambitious, seeking to accomplish a great many things. Yet its implementation is not aligned with its ambitions, because it demands too little of students. This gap between intentions and implementation can cause students to end up with anti-intellectual attitudes, poor writing and…

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…

After describing our interdisciplinary humanities course and its history, we identify challenges these courses face and strategies for keeping them vigorous. We argue that course longevity depends on effective translation of vision and content into explicit goals bridging the gaps between faculty members and between faculty and students. (Contains…

Gentrain is a time-modulated, highly mediated interdisciplinary general education format which has been initiated by Monterey Peninsula College (California). Each of the 16 independent segments covers a 16-class-hour two-week period, and earns one semester unit of credit. Planning, publicizing, staffing, evaluation, and classroom procedures are…

Experiential learning, or learning by doing, fits newer conceptions about the process of learning. John Dewey's emphasis on experience as the key to real learning, Paulo Freire's criticism of the "banking concept" of education, and David Kolb's description of the cycle of experiential learning have changed the conception of learning.…

Based on thirteen examples of humanities programs across the U.S., this book attempts to address the question of what an effective core humanities curriculum should include. It looks at issues such as course requirements, standardized versus more flexible programs of learning, and the question of how responsive such programs should be to current…

This paper seeks to explain the epistemological bases for the two cultures and to show why this disciplinary divide continues to plague American academic culture. Next, we discuss strategies for bridging the two cultures through general education curricula which promote mutual understanding of the two cultures while educating students in basic…

Summarizes interviews with philosophy, electronics, data processing, and radiology students about the humanities. Decries the false dichotomy established in the literature between humanities and vocational education. Illustrates three methods of "marrying" humanities and occupational education: free-standing humanities electives; humanities…

This collection of articles, reviews, and reports related to the humanities in community and two-year colleges begins with Fred Pincus's "Class Conflicts and Community Colleges: Vocational Education during the Reagan Years," which discusses the social effects of the Reagan administration's educational policies, especially with respect to…

The notion that the interdisciplinary enterprise involves abandoning a discipline for a consistently holistic stance is critiqued. It is suggested that there are ways of exploring interdisciplinary relationships from the perspective of a discipline. (MLW)

Paper presented at the 1972 Summer Seminar of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages held June 19-23, 1972, at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado. (DS)

Humanists at community colleges, faced with vocationalism and other negative forces, have begun to rid themselves of elitist, insular attitudes and are aggressively pursuing new curricular structures and instructional methods within all areas of the college mission. Enrollment in interdisciplinary humanities (I-D) at two-year colleges, for…

In 1988, 11 faculty members at Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC), Michigan, taught a customized honors class at KVCC focussing on connections between disciplines. It soon became clear how little faculty members understood and appreciated their colleagues' fields and perspectives. Following the course, faculty participants concluded that…