Give them bread--and Socrates

Salt shakers
June 2002

Give them bread—and Socrates
Many scoff at the idea. Critics call it a waste of time.

Teaching the "Great Books" to homeless and impoverished adults will do little to improve their station in life, they say.

But Earl Shorris, founder of the Bard Clemente Course in the Humanities, could not disagree more. Shorris says that the humanities are the most practical education anyone can receive. Education, he says, will change the world.

Shorris is himself a product of "Great Books" training, a graduate of the University of Chicago where liberal studies thrived under the patronage of renowned professor Robert Maynard Hutchins. While researching a book on poverty in America, New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy, Shorris interviewed a female inmate at a New York correctional facility.

When he asked her what the poor needed to escape the chains of poverty, she responded, "You've got to teach the moral life of downtown."

Shorris was struck by her insight and decided he must find a way to offer this "moral life" through reflection on the arts, theater, books, music concerts, and other luminations commonly reserved for the financially sound. Through a partnership between Bard College, which offers six units of college credit to graduates, and the Roberto Clemente Community Center in New York City, which offered the inaugural space, Shorris began the Bard Clemente Course in the Humanities in 1995 with 31 students. Seventeen completed that first course.

By 2001, 252 students graduated from the course, 212 earned college credit, 179 enrolled in a college or university, and nine went on to attend Bard College on full scholarships.

The program is now offered across the country in cities as distant as Chicago, Seattle, Tampa Bay, and Fairbanks, Alaska. If possible, a local college gives the graduate credit; otherwise students can get credit for their studies from Bard College.

Books on the syllabus include: Aquinas' Summa Theologica, Augustine's Confessions, Sophocles' Antigone, Shakespeare plays, poetry, and more. Some programs are also able to offer tickets to local theater or concerts. Publishing companies like W.W. Norton donate many of the books for the course. Other funding comes from a federal grant and private donations. At most sites, childcare is provided and graduates receive assistance for transportation.

A similar program exists at the University of Notre Dame, started by two professors in its Program of Liberal Studies (PLS), F. Clark Power and Stephen Fallon, who were inspired by the Bard Clemente program. South Bend is home to the South Bend Center for the Homeless, a nationally renowned center lauded for its "continuum of care" philosophy that assists residents through addiction recovery, job training, finding an apartment, and eventually purchasing a home. The founding director of the center, Lou Nanni, is a graduate of PLS, and Power immediately saw the potential for partnership.

Now the Community Extension World Masterpiece Seminar is offered four times a year through the homeless center, with about 15 students in each class. Those who complete the eight-week course receive one credit from Notre Dame. Students from the PLS program provide transportation and child care for the Extension students, and some undergraduates even assist in teaching courses.

New American Blues has been updated and re-released as Riches for the Poor: The Clemente Course in the Humanities (W.W. Norton, 2000).—Tara Dix

For more information:
In Defense of a Practical Education by Earl Shorris
Review of New American Blues
South Bend Center for the Homeless

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