Longfellow Humanities Magnet School
teachers use a Humanities content framework which incorporates world
cultures and the American experience across the grades. It is through
the curriculum that students learn the stories of the past and present
cultures from which they can draw knowledge and understanding to
prepare them for the future.
Of particular
importance is how our specialists in music, art, world language, media,
and technology support the classroom teachers in the Humanities.
Connections are made across disciplines to help students understand the
interactions of art, music, history, geography, literature/language in
creating the great ideas and accomplishments of humankind.
Classroom
teachers instruct all students in reading using a Balanced Literacy
approach, and use the principles of Thinking Mathematics in promoting
mathematical understanding. Specialists in art and music complete a well-rounded curriculum for all Longfellow Humanities Magnet School
students.
But, what exactly are the Humanities?
The Humanities are often defined as a group of
academic disciplines, including history, literature, philosophy and
ethics, foreign languages and cultures, and the arts.
The
Humanities are also a way of thinking about and responding to the
world - as tools we use to examine and make sense of the human
experience. The Humanities enable us to reflect upon our lives and ask
fundamental questions of value, purpose.
The Humanities enrich and ennoble us, and their pursuit would be
worthwhile even if they were not socially useful. But in fact, the
Humanities are socially useful. They fulfill vitally important needs
for:
- Critical and imaginative thinking about the issues that confront us as citizens and as human beings;
- Reasoned and open-minded discussion of the basic values that
are at stake in the various policies and practices that are proposed to
address these issues;
- Understanding and appreciating the experiences of others,
and the ways in which the issues that confront us now have been
understood in other times, places, and cultures.
The Humanities concern themselves with the complete record of human
experience - exploring, assessing, interpreting, and refining it, while at
the same time adding to it.
[Source: www.mfh.org/foundation/human.htm]
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Minnesota Humanities Commission
