Educators at U.S. Colleges Emphasize Humanistic Study and Civic Thought

Two days before his 12th birthday, his mother flew him to New York, where she worked a minimum-wage job in a garment factory. At Columbia, Montás studied the Core Curriculum and encountered the writings of St. Augustine. He recalled that Augustine provided language for exploring his own interior life and questions of adulthood in America.

Montás went on to direct Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum and now leads a center on citizenship and civic thought at Bard College.

These instructors describe their work as introducing students to questions of identity, purpose, and the world around them. They distinguish this approach from training aimed solely at employment. Montás stated that the goal is to give students tools for a life of freedom.

Andrew Delbanco, who teaches at Columbia, said the fundamental obligation of a humanities teacher is to develop in students an allergy to ideology and certainty.

The article described humanistic education as drawing students into a long-running conversation across centuries. It noted that this tradition includes rival schools of thought such as Stoicism, Catholic social teaching, conservatism, and critical race theory.

Teachers present historical and literary examples to illustrate how humans navigate tensions between autonomy and belonging, freedom and order. It quoted Plutarch’s statement that the mind is wood that needs igniting rather than a vessel to be filled.

The piece added that students exposed to these ideals often orient their ambitions toward specific causes or social problems.