It’s holiday time again and we are reminded in myriad ways to be charitable and generous to all sorts of causes. Americans are generous in their giving and they do give in various ways. Some prefer to send their money and be content with the anonymity of their small donations. Others prefer to volunteer their work and enjoy interacting with others. The very rich, often vaingloriously, part with millions in order to see their names splashed on the marquees of buildings or featured in the names of institutions, universities, or hospitals.
And then there are the truly transformative givers. Those who with stubborn resilience and vision start something that meets the needs of people that few would find important or worthy enough to part their money for. In this season of giving, I want to present to you such an exceptional person.
Earl Shorris was a writer and social critic who dedicated the later part of his life fighting poverty through education. In 1995 he started the Clemente* Course in the Humanities with the purpose of teaching poor and disadvantaged individuals the art of how to think critically and independently and how to appreciate literature and the arts just like those who had the advantage of going to good schools and colleges.
Finding himself with a group of inmates in 1995, he struck a conversation with a female prisoner, Viniece Walker, who told him that “people are poor because they don’t have the moral life of the downtown.” Prompted by Shorris, she continued to explain that “by taking children to downtown, to plays, museums, concerts, lectures, they can learn the moral life of the downtown” as opposed “to the moral life of the street.” Earl Shorris replied: “You mean the humanities.” “Yes, Earl, the humanities” Viniece replied. Shorris was surprised that Viniece had not mentioned money or jobs. Instead her solution was: teach children the art of thinking and expose them to the good life (good life as the philosophers defined it) and children would grow up to desire and, hence, strive for the good life, not the life of the street.
Thus, out of this improbable conversation, the Clemente Course in the Humanities was born, first administered in a class of inmates in upstate New York. With the support of a few generous donors and the pro bono teaching of college faculty the Clemente Course was taught to 10,000 individuals all around the world over the next 15-plus years. It was taught to drug addicts, prisoners and downtrodden people in NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Charleston, SC, and Madison Wisconsin; to native Americans in Oklahoma and Alaska; to underprivileged persons in Vancouver and Halifax, Canada; to natives in Mexico City and Buenos Aires: to Aborigines in Australia; and to poor people in So. Korea.
The one-year course was an exploration of philosophical reasoning and ethics from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hume and Mills; of literature from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to Shakespeare, Maya poetry and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and of history and arts. The standard teaching technique was the Socratic method of questions and answers. Students came to appreciate it to the point some of them would ask “what would Socrates do in my situation?” Students learned that there was more to life than money; that a contemplative life was a rewarding life. Shorris came to discover the democracy of the humanities, meaning humanities could be taught and be appreciated by different people in different countries. And above all, the Clemente Course changed the lives of the students. Of those who were inmates very few returned to prison; many of the students went on to enroll in colleges, even earn doctoral degrees; the majority got and kept jobs. The average cost per student was about $2,000, a fraction compared to the cost of keeping people incarcerated or supporting them through welfare payments or keeping them unproductive.
A year after his death in 2012, Shorris’s book The Art of Freedom was published. The title was emblematic of what the Clemente Course in Humanities had accomplished. It took people with no or very little possibility of having a decent education and gave them the skills to understand the worlds of thought, art, and human condition so that they would become free. Free and able to realize their potential that was no less than that of others who had found themselves in luckier and brighter paths of life. As I was reading the book, I recalled the scene in the 1980s movie “Educating Rita” when her college tutor (Michael Cain) asks Rita (a thirty-something working class woman) “why do you want to get an education?” and Rita answers back “In order to become independent.”
There are a few lessons that come out through the book. The first lesson is epitomized in the words of that female inmate Vincie Walker. When children grow up in poor environments, deprived of good education or the opportunity to witness culture and civic life they are more likely to learn the moral life of the street than the moral life of the downtown. They will grow never exposed to the manners, habits and customs of the privileged classes. That is, they will never be exposed to the good life. Yes, their teachers and their schools will try to offer them glimpses of the good life with field trips and classroom talks; but it’s not the same as when you witness firsthand the lives of the those who have the means to live the good life. Societies that do not promote educational or community integration are bound to produce morals of the street as opposed to morals of the downtown.
The second lesson is that it’s wrong to write off people that have fallen on the wrong side of society, whether this is the side of poverty, crime, of personal depravation. Many of these people can be taught to lift themselves up and have productive and useful lives.
In recognition of his transformative work, Earl Shorris was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton.
*The course was named after the legendary baseball player of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Roberto Clemente.
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