An extensive study of humanities education in the nation's public schools, commissioned by the United States Congress, concludes that history, literature, and languages are inadequately taught, and most students fail to learn important knowledge about their shared past and culture. Data from a nation-wide survey reveal gross ignorance of major…

One of a series of 11 arts and humanities career exploration guides for grade 7-12 teachers, counselors, and students, this curriculum guide is intended to help teachers help students explore arts and humanities careers in regular grade 7-12 arts and humanities courses. Focus throughout the four sections is on augmenting, rather than replacing,…

In an effort to determine external and internal reasons for program, course, enrollment, and instructional differences in the strength of the humanities curriculum at two-year colleges, 20 colleges representing a variety of sizes, geographic locations, means of control, and program emphases were selected for site visits. Interviews revealed that…

The university and the inner city is examined in this collection of papers. Chapters include: Establishing an Urban Commuter University: The Need for Community (Reynold Feldman and Barbara Hursh); Adult and Community Education: Mobilizing the Resources of the City (Roger Hiemstra); The Arts and Humanities in an Urban Environment (Neil Rudin);…

Divided in two sections, this monograph presents information on trends in the humanities curricula in two-year colleges from several sources: two surveys of selected public and private community colleges (156 in 1975 and 178 in 1977-78) distributed throughout the country through which instructors and campus facilitators provided data on enrollment…

As a result of the evaluation that many English and social studies courses inadequately prepare students for today's world, a humanities program was designed to deal with real social, ethical, and educational problems while retaining the essential skills and ideas of the traditional subjects. This syllabus, the first of three sequential humanities…

This paper takes the position that "the general phenomenon of meta-disciplinarity should find a place in contemporary investigations into the organization and production of knowledge." In the meta-disciplinary triad of art, science, and the humanities, the humanities originated out of a distinction between the human and the divine. The history of…

In "The Prince" Machiavelli offers a cool, practical and unsentimental look at what man is. He offers hands-on instruction for achieving stability and a well-run principality. Whether or not Shakespeare read "The Prince," which was not translated until years after the playwright's death, the book's principles were generally in…

This paper discusses the book "Achilles in Vietnam" (Jonathan Shay) in relation to Homer's "Iliad" and the need for society to accept the consequences of veterans' experiences. Classical allusions to the epic are incorporated into the study and U.S. experience of the Vietnam War. The paper advocates student "ownership" of literature study and…

While the mentoring process appears to occur regularly and usually quite effectively in the sciences, it seems not to occur as readily in non-science areas such as the humanities and the social sciences. This study is a follow up to earlier studies that examined interview responses of students who participated in summer research programs. The…

This paper discusses the current division of knowledge at the college and university level, its historical roots, and the application of Actor Network Theory (ANT) to arrive at an explanation of the permanence of the current division of knowledge as well as what form a new division of knowledge might take. It finds fragmentation and disintegration…

Although several recent articles have addressed postmodernism in ethical terms, it is not difficult to see the perils facing anyone who wants to talk about ethics, since it is hard to justify certain practices over others. An individual cannot appeal to human needs or capacities, since these are said to be variously constructed by various…

A National Initiative has been formed to address the urgent need for the humanities and arts to gain a voice in the planning and development of the National Information Infrastructure (NII). This report makes a case for the importance of connecting all people with electronic access to the nation's cultural heritage, and relates the special…

By virtue of its interdisciplinary nature, the Humanities Base program at the University of Dayton encourages carefully designed composition instruction that reaches beyond the boundaries of traditional pedagogy. Because the Humanities Base themes are set in binary opposites--faith versus reason; autonomy versus responsibility; individual versus…

This book of essays sets forth Eisner's theories of aesthetic intelligence, or theories that rethink the connections among art, literacy, research, and evaluation. The book is divided into four sections of four essays each. The first section, "Cognition and Representation," explains how the process of education expands and deepens the kinds of…