At humanities programs throughout the United States, average citizens express a desire to slow the pace of our discourse, to examine things in greater depth, to let history reveal its patterns and lessons, and to back away from the shallow communications of the electronic media. The humanities are our best lens on our past and on the culture we share as a people. The old academic joke is that education is wasted on the young. In a sense this has never been more true. The American educational system, by almost any measure, is in crisis.
Young people exhibit diminished literacy skills.
Few books, even textbooks, are actually read in the public schools. When citizens are ready to take books and cultural history seriously, the NEH is poised to introduce them to some of the finest scholars of America, some of the best texts ever written, and some of the most engaging ideas they have ever encountered. The NEH is not a wild invention of the New Deal or the Great Society. All civilizations sponsor culture. Most culture has always been a private enterprise, as indeed it is in the United States of 1995.