History of the Clemente Course
The Franklin & Marshall Clemente Course in the Humanities was initiated as a result of a visit to F&M by journalist and researcher Earl Shorris, who was a Seachrist Lecturer in 2004 during the CLAS series on "Democratic Entrepreneurship."
Shorris' work embodies the ideal of democratic entrepreneurship as he used his extensive research on the causes and conditions of poverty to create a unique educational program, "The Clemente Course," that uses rigorous humanities education to pull people out of poverty and into empowered citizenship.
The first Course was offered in 1995 in New York City at the Roberto Clemente Community Center. Shorris designed an introduction to the humanities that offered instruction in moral philosophy, art history, U.S. history, logic and literature to traditionally underserved students. Students were chosen using the following criteria: an income of less than 150% of the federal poverty line, a brief application and personal interview, the ability to read and comprehend a page of a Platonic dialogue.
F&M is one of more than 75 institutions in North America and beyond that now offers the college-level course for economically disadvantaged adults based on Shorris' thesis that humanities-related studies expand horizons and help break the bonds of poverty.
An essential element of the Clemente Course is a focus on the Socratic method, whereby the instructor moderates a class discussion on a particular topic, but the students are required to present and debate their own analysis of the assigned texts. Faculty will provide appropriate background context, instruct students in analytical techniques, and draw connections with the other humanities topics.
In his book Riches for the Poor, Shorris argues that poor people tend to stay poor because of a "surround of force," writing "the poor, those who lose in the game of modern society, are thrust into a surround of force. Inside the surround, they experience anomie: panic is limitless action within a surround, but the surround ruthlessly limits the freedom of its objects by enclosing them." The term illuminates the ways poor people feel hemmed in, limited by circumstance, and wracked by survivalism.
Only exceptionally talented people can rise out of the "surround," which otherwise binds the poor inside a tight knot of fear and anxiety, hems them into purely private concerns with immediate safety, food and shelter, according to Shorris. He believes that by studying Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Conrad, Michelangelo and Cezanne, the poor can become "public" beings, and begin, as he wrote, "the journey from poverty to democracy."
Shorris' thesis is backed up by evidence. Despite the fact that the students are severely disadvantaged economically, an extraordinary percentage of those who complete the one year course go on to attend college.
