Humanities Curriculum
We have opted to teach a cohesive course in humanities instead of disparate courses on literature, art, and history. This is motivated by the idea of a totally integrated curriculum.
What I mean by this is that every class one takes at Aegis has clear and thoughtful connections to every other class. You might walk out of a lecture in humanities about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and hear how she was inspired by a demonstration regarding the newly invented voltaic pile (a kind of battery) at the Royal Society. Volta’s nephew showed that the application of current to a dissected frog leg triggered movement. This catalyzed her vision for what would be Frankenstein. In turn, we see this inspired a generation of scientists to suss out the nascent fields of organic chemistry and electrochemistry. We will focus on a variety of subjects including:
- History (From antiquity to recent)
- Various schools of philosophy- especially those underpinning modern science
- Music, Art, and Literature
- World Religion
- Societal structure: governance, economics, and politics
- Language and the history thereof
This is necessarily an incomplete list. Humanities seeks to understand and tie together all the realms of human knowledge and interaction. Some things that appear on this list may already seem controversial and this is by design. We seek to foster the skills to engage in constructive dialogue- to learn to bridge differences. We also wish to help our students become comfortable with cognitive dissonance. These skills will foster resilience, empathy, and mutual respect.