Week 6, Blog 1 - Humanities and the 21st Century Classroom

The article is from the following link:  http://www.edutopia.org/blog/humanities-twenty-first-century-bill-smoot.

As an English and World History teacher, the article “Humanities in the Twenty-First Century,” written by Bill Smoot, really spoke to me.  To begin, Smoot discusses the fact that currently, there is a major divide between education thinkers.  That divide is between those who believe that a STEM-based (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) should replace a liberal arts education.

Smoot maintains that teaching the classics helps to instill within students ideas and wisdom about humanity that technology does not necessarily have the capability of teaching students.  Continually referencing Homer’s Odyssey, he points out that his students believed that that epic can help them and give them wisdom. 

Texts such as The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and many others provide students with issues that they will have to contend with.  Morality, prejudice, doing the right thing, change, racism, heroism, and so much more.  These texts – combined with art, music, poetry, and so on – force humans to think about issues of this world to help solve the problems of the world. 

Technology is great.  However, it is not the answer to everything.   It is not the solution to everything.  We are the solution.  We have to learn from these texts – and other texts as well – so that we can help students understand the dynamic issues that they will be facing in the world.  Computers won’t solve our problems (at least not yet…).   We must identify our flaws (as shown in these texts), examine them, and figure out how to deal with them.

Some of the readings I’ve done have talked about having students play games to help them read.  If it helps them read, then that’s fine.  But reading and learning and issues are not games.  We cannot let students start thinking that everything is a game.  The readings that we provide students must be connected to real-world issues so that students see the relevance and understand why they have stood the test of time.

Then, implementing technology to help students make further sense of the text will make the text even more relevant for the student.  We must integrate the two together.   Things cannot be done in isolation anymore.  If we want a well-rounded child, we must combine the classics and humanities with the new technologies.

Smoot, Bill.  “Humanities in the Twenty-First Century.”  10 July 2011.  Web.  Edutopia.org.  25 July 2011.  <http://www.edutopia.org/blog/humanities-twenty-first-century-bill-smoot>.