This wonderful article in the American Educator describes the work of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, which has been conducting summer seminars for teachers for 30 years.

It opens the story through the eyes of a teacher named Keith Black:

“Instead of being subjected to what he disparagingly calls “PowerPoint drudgery,” Black spent eight hours each day dis- cussing classic works of literature, 17 in all, that he had read the previous three months on his own: Prometheus Bound, Agamem- non, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Peace, Lysistrata, King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Blood Wedding, Crime and Punishment, and Beloved.”

The Dallas Institute does not mention the Common Core or testing or rubrics:

“For 30 years, the Dallas Institute has treated teachers as intellectuals. To that end, the nonprofit educational organization, founded by former faculty members at the University of Dallas, offers teachers from all grade levels and all disciplines—not just English—an experience that either reacquaints them with or introduces them to the literature of Western civilization. The classic works studied are taught at the level of a graduate-school course and do not at all resemble typical professional development. Educators who attend this program rise to the challenge of engaging in insightful discussions about these complicated texts. In fact, they hunger to do so.

“Teachers work with human material, and the best way traditionally to gain access to human things is through the humani- ties, which are the foundation of a liberal arts education,” says Claudia Allums, who directs the Summer Institute. But a liberal arts education encompasses more than literature or philosophy or history courses, she says. It’s a particular spirit with which one approaches any discipline. “If a teacher has a broad, strong liberal arts education, then he or she is going to have a broad, strong foundation in human sensibilities. That’s the foundation we believe is important for any teacher’s wisdom.”

“Today, that belief is not widely shared. With the overwhelming focus on testing and measuring, it’s rare to hear words such as “wisdom,” “humanities,” and “human sensibilities” in relation to public education. Occasionally, reports like The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation,2 published last year by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will decry the narrowing of the curriculum and call for a renewed emphasis on the liberal arts and their importance. But in the end, often little will be done to act on these ideas, however noble.”

I visited the the Dallas Institute a few years ago and was exhilarated by the spirit that permeates it: love of learning. Learning for the sake of learning, not for a bonus or a prize. This is a very small island of joy in a land where joy has been banned by federal and state authorities. Here there is intellectual freedom, which is endangered in our society by the powerful plutocrats who prize standardization and the ability to check the right box.

How ironic that the Institute flourishes in Texas, where the educational industrial complex was first launched. It is a small but important form of resistance to the status quo, a place where learning lives and thrives.