HUMANITIES FOR HUMANITY
John Duncan & Kelley Castle
Photography: Geoff George
“They draw on different – and often more difficult – life experiences than those of Trin students”
May 2008 - On an evening late last fall, students of perhaps the most unusual course at U of T braved blowing snow and plunging temperatures to gather at St. Hilda’s College for a lecture on Simone de Beauvoir and feminism.
Class members – single moms, a disabled retiree, Rwandan refugees, and casualties of disrupted education, dead-end jobs, illness, addiction – mingled with their mentors, fresh-faced Trinity students keen for another session of reality-based philosophy. Together, Downtown and Gown lightened the buffet table before the lecture, simultaneously creating a heady buzz about de Beauvoir and existentialism. “I feel the room heating up,” cracked one participant. “It must be all that thinking.”
It was the outcome of a long-held dream of Kelley Castle, dean of students at Trinity College, and her husband, John Duncan, director of the College’s Ethics, Society and Law program. Ten years ago, working at King’s College in Halifax, they read about an experimental humanities course for the poor in New York City. Its inspiration was Brazilian intellectual Paulo Freire’s theory that the poorest among us, if given the educational tools and space for reflection, can critically assess the social structures that shape them and work to change their circumstances. Castle and Duncan arrived at Trinity in 2004; when U of T’s Student Experience Fund was created two years later, a $22,600 grant from the fund enabled them to launch the Humanities for Humanity course at Trinity last September.
Participants for the free, 13-week course were recruited from community centres, churches, shelters and job-training programs. Castle had worked at women’s shelters and a camp for underprivileged kids during her university days; Duncan, for an anti-apartheid coalition. They knew that many faced barriers to education beyond the cost of tuition, so a hot meal, TTC tokens and babysitting were offered along with free reading materials and school supplies.
Duncan designed the course, drawing readings from literature, economics, history and philosophy to trace the development of Western culture from the late Middle Ages to the present. They opted not to award marks or make the course a transition to university studies, but to treat it as “an end in itself,” Duncan says. “It’s just good to read these important texts and think about the ideas.”
Distinguished thinkers, including philosopher and Trinity fellow Mark Kingwell and Provost Andy Orchard, were invited to deliver the lectures, All volunteered their time.
So did some 17 student mentors, to gain teaching experience and help the participants. The outline intrigued them: “readings about economic theory one week, a novel the next,” says Laura Berger, a second-year student majoring in literary studies and philosophy. But the mentors never anticipated what they would learn themselves when they discovered how smart the participants were despite their lack of education.
Participants had to be willing to read one text and attend one lecture a week. Despite Castle’s initial fears that some would drop out, of the 33 who enrolled, 25 pursued the program to the last session.
In delivering the lecture on de Beauvoir, Castle explained the formation of subjectivity in terms of essence, immanence, transcendence and the burden of freedom, leading to de Beauvoir’s famous thesis that woman is made, not born. In the small discussion groups that followed, it was clear the students had connected the dots to get the political message that we are all responsible for changing our lives.
Debate in the groups was intense, and personal “They draw on different – and often more difficult – life experiences than those of Trin students,” Berger says. “They question whether there has been progress from feudalism to capitalism.”
The class drew to a close, but discussion continued. The student mentors were equally reluctant to leave despite being in the thick of mid-terms, with essays due and seminars to deliver. One student, a disabled black senior, said: “Every week, when I walk down the street to come here, I get excited. It’s just extraordinary to be in this comfortable, safe place, to share my thoughts with others and hear what they have to say, and to think at a higher level beyond ordinary things.”
It is, as another participant described it, “a revolution through education.”
– Excerpted from a story by Margaret Webb
