"On the Uses of a Liberal Education" Reading Response

This reading assignment centered around a project called the Clemente course, where the instructor educated at-risk students from lower classes about the humanities, a set of knowledge to which few if any of the twenty-odd students had ever been exposed.  The purpose of this course was to educate the students on how to better respond to the world around them--a world the author describes as full of "forces" that hinder the lower classes' abilities to ever contribute to and function within society.  The author and his colleagues selected a group of thirty disadvantaged students judged to be most likely to benefit from the course and brought in various instructors to educate them in history, art, logic, rhetoric, and ethics.  Before and after the course, the researchers administered a questionnaire to the students to measure the level of "forces" they felt in their lives and the degree to which they reflected on their life. The author also shared bits of his personal philosophy on humanities education throughout the article. In particular, he expanded on why he felt it was important to educate these students, citing particular examples of how the course seemed to affect changes in how the students responded to their environment and dealt more appropriately with conflict.  The study found that, after taking the Clemente course, the students were more able to respond to situations with reasoned reflection and many began to participate more in society--getting better jobs, going to college, and abstaining from criminal behavior. The author draws the conclusion that exposing people of lower socioeconomic classes--an experience usually reserved for the upper and middle classes--could make the difference that catalyzes upward mobility within the lower classes.

I do take issue with the fact that none of the data from the questionnaire was mentioned and analyzed in the description of the study, which makes me question whether the favorable results were quantitative as well as qualitative. The author gives several examples of how the class yielded positive results, relating ways that students changes the way they reason out and respond to conflict, but he gave little mention to how this knowledge could've also been dangerous to the students not able to properly apply it.  These two points made me distrust the results a bit, but not enough for me to believe that the study was invalid.  I just think the reading read as a bit biased in favor of the hypothesis.

I agree with the author on several points, especially when he posits that "the humanities are a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, for learning to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever force is turned against you."  It reminds me of the movie "Dangerous Minds" when the teacher talks about the students learning to use learning writing as a way to make themselves tougher and more prepared to take on the world.  I think this line is "golden" because it speaks of the manifold benefits of education, in particular, humanities education.  Teaching kids how to think rather than just facts that they should know is the only way students will learn to put all that knowledge to use.  Also, this line goes right to the heart of the matter--in saying that the humanities are the "foundation for getting along in the world" it hints at the gap between those that usually get along (privileged elites) and those that don't (the underpriviledged poor) in society, while also showing how education in the humanities might help close this gap.