The Humanities in the Schools. ACLS Occasion Paper, No. 20.

Designed to serve as a record of the initial public activity of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Program in Humanities Curriculum Development, this collection of three articles offers different perspectives on the humanities in the schools. In the first article, "The Humanities and Public Education," Stanley N. Katz discusses the need to determine how the humanities can increase the range of knowledge necessary to the intellectual development and social acculturation of young people from elementary through university education and how some of the new humanities research and teaching techniques can be made to work for school teachers. In the second article, "Cultural Equity," Henry Louis Gates, Jr. conveys the message that an equilibrium needs to be established between an untenable celebration of diversity and monochrome homogeneity. Although no guarantee exists, Gates proposes that the mistake would be not to try. A question and answer segment follows his paper. The final article, "The Women's Studies Movement," by Catherine R. Stimpson, describes women's studies as a pioneer in multicultural research, teaching, and governance in its exploration of divisive differences. A question and answer segment appears after the article. The agenda for the August 31-September 2, 1992 American Council of Learned Societies Conference as well as lists of speakers and advisory board members conclude the document. Attached to the main document is "ACLS Education Newsletter, volume 1, number 2, Summer 1993." It contains program site news from Cambridge-Brookline (Massachusetts), San Diego (California), Los Angeles (California), and Minneapolis (Minnesota) for the ACLS Program in Humanities Curriculum Development. (CK)