THE CLiC MANIFESTO
BY SHANNON CARTER AND DONNA DUNBAR-ODOM
Humanities education has become irrelevant at best, destructive at worst. Teachers rarely see beyond their own disciplinary interests, and students rarely have any sense of how each individual class fits into a larger curriculum or into their education as it is represented in their degree plans. All are disconnected from the larger picture.
The work of Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater shows us how even teachers with the best intentions have little sense of what their students come to class already knowing and needing to learn; if students don't come to college already equipped to "succeed," they may well be out of luck if they don't also find the wherewithal to make the connections necessary for success on their own.
“We promote greater literacy or we promote greater humility. The first choice is easy. The second is not. The second choice is infinitely more human, however. Perhaps one of the consequences of literacy is its failure to end the violence of an unfair society” (J. Elspeth Stuckey. The Violence of Literacy, 124). |
“The humanities are in trouble because they have become increasingly isolated from the life of the larger society” (Kurt Spellymeyer, Art of Living, 4). |
