125 (Spring 2000): 50-51
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The University in the Community: An Overview of Humanities Out There
ERIKA NANES
MANY commentators have noted that the end of the cold war in 1989 led to a reduction in government spending on research in both the sciences and the humanities. The challenge to humanists posed by these reductions, and by the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, has contributed to ongoing debate about the nature and purpose of a humanities education. Two recent books address these questions. In New American Blues, published in 1997, Earl Shorris argues that the humanities possess unique cultural capital that should be redistributed to those--such as the poor, homeless, and imprisoned--who have traditionally had less access to that capital. More recently, Robert Scholes, in The Rise and Fall of English, has identified the special feature of a humanities education as its ability to give students an unmediated experience of a variety of texts.
The Humanities Out There program incorporates elements of both of these very different perspectives on humanities education. HOT's goal is to teach basic skills, especially writing, through the study of challenging primary texts and problems from the humanities, a focus on the direct experience of texts that is essential to Scholes's definition of the discipline. Because many of these materials are canonical, though, the program also exemplifies Shorris's goal of extending the cultural capital of the canon. In short, the program combines a focus on basic literacy, or fluency in reading and writing, with cultural literacy, a general knowledge of Western civilization, and with multicultural literacy, an awareness of the relations among different cultural traditions.
HOT's triangular focus finds an analogue in its organizational structure. Unlike many outreach programs, which bring previously developed curricula into schools without seeking input from teachers, HOT collaborates with local K-12 instructors and depends equally on the inputs of a faculty mentor, advanced graduate students, and undergraduates. Each component of this team fulfills a separate yet essential function. The teachers provide information about how HOT can best address existing curricular needs, along with classroom experience that enables them to suggest the most effective ways to do so. The faculty mentor and graduate students design HOT curricula as well as train and supervise the undergraduates who work as tutors. The last constitute a crucial link in the chain between the university and the local schools. By working with small groups of students on their language and writing skills, the undergraduate tutors help redress the problems inherent in overcrowded classrooms, problems that might otherwise undermine the goals that HOT has established. This three-part structure enables HOT both to address existing needs and to suggest additional possibilities. It provides teachers with concrete assistance--assistance that can help them meet statewide educational requirements--while also introducing new curricula and new materials to the classroom.
HOT is unusual among outreach programs in its format. Rather than year- or semester-long segments, the HOT curriculum takes the form of five-week modules. The brevity of these modules fosters intense intellectual focus on a single topic while giving workshop leaders the chance to explore a single topic in depth over a meaningful period of time. This combination of autonomy and interconnectedness works well for teachers, who can integrate a topic covered by HOT with their district's established curriculum for whatever length of time best suits their needs.
Perhaps the best illustration of HOT's structure is its world mythology program. This program was designed by Julia Lupton and Tracy McNulty, a graduate student in comparative literature at UC Irvine, with the guidance and collaboration of local teachers. Their goal was to introduce students to world mythology by using excerpts not only from classical myths but also from popular treatments of those myths. Here, too, the use of independent yet interrelated modules enabled HOT to achieve a combination of breadth and depth. The portability of the modules made it possible to use them in several classrooms (one of fourth and fifth graders, one of eighth graders, and one of eleventh graders) at the same time. It also enabled HOT to treat myths from several different cultures--in this case the ancient Greeks, the Maya, and the Chinese--in a single academic year.
Having experienced explosive growth in its second year of operation, HOT is now attempting to find ways to manage that growth while continuing to facilitate the improvement it seeks. To attain this last goal, HOT is focusing in the 1999-2000 academic year on maintaining strict student-tutor ratios of five to one at all times. The need for such improvement becomes even more urgent in the light of the statistic that in 1998 only 2.3% of Latino high school seniors in California met the requirements for admission to the University of California system. Information like this provides an important reminder that for all those students who have already flourished as a result of HOT, there are many others who could benefit greatly from the same opportunity.
The author is a doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. This paper was presented at the 1999 CCCC Annual Convention in Atlanta.
Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.
Shorris, Earl. New American Blues: A Journey through Poverty to Democracy. New York: Norton, 1997.
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
ADE Bulletin 125 (Spring 2000): 50-51 |
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