Making a Difference : One Public School System’s Approach: Improve students’ access to the humanities

Urban high-school students are too often consigned to skill-and-drill classes, which many educators believe do not develop critical, analytic thinking or provide a well-rounded education; at little additional cost, a public-school program developed at Reseda’s Cleveland High School offers any student, not just the gifted or elite, a concept-rich, interdisciplinary humanities education called Humanitas. It keeps more kids in school and motivates them to go to college.

MILESTONES

1981-1985: The Los Angeles Unified School District designates a humanities magnet program at Cleveland High School in Reseda. Music teacher Neil Anstead leads the development of an interdisciplinary, team-taught, writing-based curriculum. Instead of teaching literature, history, fine art and philosophy independently, subjects are integrated and taught in thematic units.

Fall 1985: The Rockefeller, Ahmanson and Stuart foundations provide seed money of nearly $2 million over six years to develop a humanities education program that can be implemented at any high school. The Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a consortium of business leaders that supports public school innovation, administers the funding.

Spring and Summer 1986: The LAUSD introduces the Humanitas program at eight high schools.

1989-92: Humanitas program expanded to 37 LAUSD high schools, three-quarters of the high schools in the district.

September 1992: Humanitas receives $100,000 Ford Foundation Innovations grant recognizing public-sector creativity and excellence.

November 1992: 4,500 students and 267 teachers participate in the Humanitas program throughout the district. Estimated additional cost to the district: $60 per Humanitas student annually.

RESULTS:

Applied to 4-year college:

Humanitas Seniors: 65%

Non-Humanitas Seniors: 11%

Grade Point Average above 3.0 (necessary to get into University of California system):

Humanitas Seniors: 27%

Non-Humanitas Seniors: 11%

Took the SAT:

Humanitas Seniors: 69%

Non-Humanitas Seniors: 30%

Annual dropout rate among “low risk” students:

Humanitas students: 3%

Non-Humanitas students: 13%

Source: Studies conducted by UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation, 1988-91

To Deliver a Humanities Education to All Students, the Humanitas Way:

Target average students of varied backgrounds. Include average students without excluding high or low achievers. Seek heterogeneous classes. Diversity in learning rates and styles, in ethnic and racial backgrounds provides an impetus for--not an impediment to--student interaction.

Involve teachers . Engage teachers who are enthusiastic about collaborative educational processes. Offer them programs to learn about topical issues in the humanities, team teaching and interdisciplinary curriculum development. Give teaching teams the latitude, within district guidelines, to design their own courses, organizing the work around central concepts (like “What is truth?” or “The rights and obligations of citizenship”) and drawing on their expertise and their students’ life experience.

Develop an interdisciplinary curriculum . Integrate subjects typically taught separately. Avoid relying on textbooks; instead, draw teaching materials from primary sources, then orient courses to reflect students’ concerns, interests, and ethnicity. Measure student mastery with essay assignments.

Seek dedicated and patient administration . Include flexible and supportive administrators who can manage without being intrusive. Coordinating interdisciplinary class schedules, teaching programs and activities is time-consuming and difficult.

“We do not accept the idea that humanities is an upper-middle-class endeavor. Our credo is that humanities for everyone.

--from a statement by Humanitas originator Neil Anstead and Humanitas Director Barbara Golding