(Host) Author and commentator Deborah Luskin teaches writing and
literature to non-traditional students throughout Vermont. And while she
admires the quantitative measures that dominate the sciences, she was
reminded recently of how important the humanities are – even though they
defy measure.
(Luskin) One day when I was making one of those
carefully choreographed trips to town to complete a dozen errands, I
didn’t have the patience to pump my own gas, so I pulled into one of the
few remaining full service stations still around. When the attendant
returned to the car with my credit card he asked, "Do you work for the
Vermont Humanities Council?"
I looked closely at the man and said, "Yes. How do you know?"
"I was your student," he said. "At Springfield ."
"
Springfield " is code for the Southern State Correctional Facility
where I used to teach writing to inmates through a partnership between
the Community High School of Vermont and the Vermont Humanities Council.
It was one of my all-time favorite jobs.
My students in jail
were among the most engaged, grateful and willing students I’ve ever
had. And this man, whose writing I remembered, confirmed what I knew:
that the time spent writing made his time in jail valuable, both
allowing and pushing him to think about his life. He was now working
full-time and he’d just welcomed his sixth grandchild into the world. He
looked well, solid, happy. I was pleased.
I’ve worked for the
Vermont Humanities Council for more than twenty-five years, delivering
literature-based programs in libraries, hospitals and alternative
schools. The hospital and prison programs, in particular, reaffirm the
importance of the humanities in our technological- and outcomes-
obsessed culture.
The humanities require critical thinking and
promote self-reflection – the very qualities that make us human. They
require us to consider what it means to be human, and they help us make
sense of a complicated world.
The humanities rarely receive the
same support as the sciences, which rely on empirical methods that can
be quantified in hard data. But recently, some humanities programs have
started collecting outcomes-based data to prove their value. Healthcare
workers who participate in literature-based humanities discussions about
medical issues have reported higher job satisfaction, lower rates of
burnout, better teamwork and greater empathy for their patients.
The
same kind of data is not available for the humanities programs I’ve
taught to teen parents or inmates. I can only cite anecdotal evidence –
such as stories of young mothers reading stories about other young
mothers coping with abuse, poverty and parental fatigue. Inevitably,
these students realize that if storybook characters can overcome
hardship, so can they.
I can also tell stories of incarcerated
men writing poetry and articulating – often for the first time – their
sorrows and dreams. And then there’s the story of the mechanic who
participated in my memoir writing class while serving time.
"That
writing class," he said as I paid for my gas, "that class was the best
thing about being in jail. It gave me a chance to think."