And of late we have accessorized our wardrobe with nets and webs, videos, and computerized materials. But over our individual attire we all still wear the same coat, the coat of the humanities. What used to be rhetoric, dialectic, and logic have over time subdivided into national literatures, classics, philosophy, art history, and the rest of the units we encounter on adjacent corridors. These are all old subjects and while if no longer the most prestigious, they are the ones that lie closest to the heart of humanity s sense of itself and its contexts. But according to some recent publications, that coat humanities wears has become frayed, worn out, and some have said, practically useless.
Literacy is the key to all learning.
Students are losing interest in careful, intensive reading and opting for the quick answer. First, I believe that we have to be straightforward about what the people who wrote the plays we read and teach were and were not. They were not radical skeptics or relativists, rather they believed in many of the truths of their day. They supported the overarching social and political system, they were nationalists, and they believed in God. But they were not blind to problems and injustices in the system in which they lived.