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Riches for the Poor: The Clemente Course in the Humanities
"You've been cheated," Earl Shorris tells a classroom of poor people in New York City. "Rich people learn the humanities; you didn't. . . . It is generally accepted in America that the liberal arts and humanities in particular belong to the elite. I think you're the elite." In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today. Why are people poor, and why do they stay poor? Shorris argues that they lack politics, or the ability to participate fully in the public world; knowing only the immediacy and oppression of force, the poor remain trapped and isolated. To test his theory, Shorris creates an experimental school teaching the humanities to poor people, giving them the means to reflect and negotiate rather than react. The results are nothing short of astonishing. Originally published in hardcover under the title New American Blues.
288 pages, Paperback
First published September 11, 2000
About the author
Earl Shorris
36 books12 followersEarl Shorris was an American writer and social critic. He is best known for establishing the Clemente Course in the Humanities, named after baseball great and humanitarian Roberto Clemente. The Clemente Course is an "educational institution founded in 1995 to teach the humanities at the college level to people living in economic distress." He was critical of Western culture as "sliding towards plutocracy and materialism." Shorris published extensively on Mexico and Mexican history. Shorris made the acquaintance of Miguel León-Portilla, who published a widely-read anthology of accounts of the conquest of Mexico from Aztec viewpoints, The Broken Spears. The two subsequently published an important anthology of Mesoamerican literature, bringing to a mass market the existence of significant body of writings by indigenous Mexicans.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 17, 2025
Lots of Golden moments...
To open, "The happiness of others is a goal worth pursuing, and the method for achieving it, democracy, is a risk worth taking."
p. 256
The humanities do not languish, useless and wasteful, when they exist apart from the intercourse of the public life, but they do not have their full effect... but if the full range of of the humanities were outside the moral realm in a democratic society, where would the society see its moral self? The members of the society would have to look to the Prince or the Church. But when church and state are separate, as in an open, democratic society, the alternative is the humanities.
pp. 7-8
...the humanities have fallen out of favor in many, perhaps most, colleges and universities now, replaced by the rich man's version of welfare-to-work training programs, although a few institutions of higher education remain devoted, at least in part, to education.
p. 8
How long a country that forsakes the ethical and intellectual strength of reflective thinking can continue to prosper is open to question. Whether such a nation can maintain a position of leadership is doubtful.
p. 8-9
Whenever the nation becomes interested, for whatever reason, in alleviating the suffering of the poor, the method is always the same: training. Some programs also attempt to teach the poor to wear more appropriate clothing, others to give them the habit of rising early, and so on. In most such programs, including those suggested by the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, both promise and punishment have a role. These policies result from the idea that the poor are different from the rest of the people, either less able or less deserving or both.
If one holds to that view, the idea of educating poor people is absurd.
p. 9
...the goal of modern society is not wealth but inequality.
p. 14
As in war, the power to define the terms belongs to the winners.
p. 17
People are poor one household, one family at a time.
p. 18
We know exactly what a cow needs, but a six-year-old girl and her twenty-two-year-old mother have sensibilities considerably more complex than those of a cow.
p. 20
The world is as relative as race, and relative poverty is unendurable, an insult to the modicum of self-regard required to participate in the human community.
p. 24
When necessity rules, there is neither time nor energy to live the political life, to participate in the circle of power...
p. 32
...an idea that lies behind Cicero's summation of the political life: "Men are born for each other."
In that plainspoken sentence, he tells us that politics is in the nature of human beings, that we are many, not one, public, not private, that we exist in the melding of speech and action, and that we are sufficiently temperate to live together, to absorb conflict through politics.
p. 32-33
Once the poor accept the mythical explanation of their situation, it becomes the central myth of their lives, and to overcome it may be nearly impossible.
p. 37
Force is not negotiable, nor can the object of force agree with it; the object can only succumb or react.
...
The bureaucracy does not use violence to exert control, but it does not permit negotiation. Some bureaucracies have elaborate appeals systems through which they feign negotiation, but everyone who deals with bureaucracies soon learns that the force they exert is non-negotiable.
...
The wordlessness of isolation, which also leaves no middle ground in which to execute human maneuvers, may be one of the most dreadful of all the many forces people use against each other.
pp. 41-42
When the poor riot in the streets or in other ways destroy the places in which they live and work, it is not an act of madness, but a result of their exclusion from citizenship, which means they have no place, no home.
p. 68
"I'll give you the walls!"
p. 121
Before I finished attempting to shake hands with the prospective students, a waiflike Asian girl with her mouth half full of cake said, "Can we get on with it? I'm bored."
I could not imagine a better group. I liked them immediately.
p. 127
The first class started badly. The young fellow who had volunteered to videotape the sessions (with an eye to making a "brilliant" documentary) telephoned to say he was going to be late, because he was on his way down from Martha's Vineyard where he had been visiting dear friends whom he had not seen for the longest time. I fired him.
p. 137
The humanities become like a mirror in which they saw their human worth, and, like all lovers, they were transformed by love.
p. 138
He showed them poems of love, seduction, commentaries on poems they read in the form of satire by later poets. "Let us read," the students demanded. And he refused.
p. 145
Henry had discovered the terrible flaw in the life of the mind, which is that knowledge does not always produce goodness.
p. 149
Abel said, "That's what Aristotle means by incontinence, when you know what's morally right, but you don't do it, because you're overcome by your passions."
p. 150
...May you never be more active than when you are doing nothing...and may you never be less lonely than when you are by yourself. (Cato)
p. 155
The moment he revealed that he was really a cellist who taught philosophy, I thought, allegro vivace, and a little faster, but not so quick that the notes did not have consequence.
p. 160
...first, the good, then prudence.
p. 166
His admission that the wish for prizes had been largely responsible for the collapse of his idea of a liberal education cannot be dismissed. Hutchins knew what should have been. Prizes, even the prize of college admission, must not rule the Clemente course.
Socrates won no prizes, started no academies, wrote not a word; he was a philosopher, the one who connected philosophy with the public world. If it can be said that Socrates bears the true responsibility for the Clemente Course, we shall not be able to measure its effect upon our students until they are dead, to borrow and old Greek view of evaluation. As winning the Nobel is not the only mark of accomplishment, going on to college is not the only route to the examined life, the pursuit of virtue, a habit of good actions, acting according to a maxim which could become general law, understanding the happiness of others as the greatest good. Although it is seldom mentioned in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Abraham Lincoln did not attend Harvard.
p. 174-175
A T.S. Eliot poem may not be immediately available to a person brought up in Appalachia or the South Bronx or East Los Angeles, but set theory has neither race nor gender, and it does not shop at Harrod's.
p. 175-176
To be able to write well requires the precise language of a logician, the aesthetic sense of a poet, and the organizational genius of a storyteller.
p. 176
While the students must learn the rules of composition, they must also gain some understanding of the limitless possibilities of language.
p. 176
The history of events without the history of ideas leads to a stream of post hoc ergo propter hoc errors, for one can only assume that succession and causation are somehow synonymous.
pp. 177-178
The purpose of studying art is to learn to see.
p. 179
from Valéry: "Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking."
pp. 180-181
...poetry is not simply sweet stuff, but dangerous, a knife at the throat of repression.
p. 181
...words do not lose their laughter over time.
p. 181
No movies should be shown to the student of literature, because they could very well confuse the student into thinking that a series of moving pictures is the equal of one word dancing.
p. 182
Mutatis mutandis, the utterly Athenian pattern--the humanities, reflective thinking, auto nomos, and the public life of citizens in a democracy--seems to survive the particularity of culture; we are indeed as different as snowflakes, as similar as snow.
p. 252
To open, "The happiness of others is a goal worth pursuing, and the method for achieving it, democracy, is a risk worth taking."
p. 256
The humanities do not languish, useless and wasteful, when they exist apart from the intercourse of the public life, but they do not have their full effect... but if the full range of of the humanities were outside the moral realm in a democratic society, where would the society see its moral self? The members of the society would have to look to the Prince or the Church. But when church and state are separate, as in an open, democratic society, the alternative is the humanities.
pp. 7-8
...the humanities have fallen out of favor in many, perhaps most, colleges and universities now, replaced by the rich man's version of welfare-to-work training programs, although a few institutions of higher education remain devoted, at least in part, to education.
p. 8
How long a country that forsakes the ethical and intellectual strength of reflective thinking can continue to prosper is open to question. Whether such a nation can maintain a position of leadership is doubtful.
p. 8-9
Whenever the nation becomes interested, for whatever reason, in alleviating the suffering of the poor, the method is always the same: training. Some programs also attempt to teach the poor to wear more appropriate clothing, others to give them the habit of rising early, and so on. In most such programs, including those suggested by the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, both promise and punishment have a role. These policies result from the idea that the poor are different from the rest of the people, either less able or less deserving or both.
If one holds to that view, the idea of educating poor people is absurd.
p. 9
...the goal of modern society is not wealth but inequality.
p. 14
As in war, the power to define the terms belongs to the winners.
p. 17
People are poor one household, one family at a time.
p. 18
We know exactly what a cow needs, but a six-year-old girl and her twenty-two-year-old mother have sensibilities considerably more complex than those of a cow.
p. 20
The world is as relative as race, and relative poverty is unendurable, an insult to the modicum of self-regard required to participate in the human community.
p. 24
When necessity rules, there is neither time nor energy to live the political life, to participate in the circle of power...
p. 32
...an idea that lies behind Cicero's summation of the political life: "Men are born for each other."
In that plainspoken sentence, he tells us that politics is in the nature of human beings, that we are many, not one, public, not private, that we exist in the melding of speech and action, and that we are sufficiently temperate to live together, to absorb conflict through politics.
p. 32-33
Once the poor accept the mythical explanation of their situation, it becomes the central myth of their lives, and to overcome it may be nearly impossible.
p. 37
Force is not negotiable, nor can the object of force agree with it; the object can only succumb or react.
...
The bureaucracy does not use violence to exert control, but it does not permit negotiation. Some bureaucracies have elaborate appeals systems through which they feign negotiation, but everyone who deals with bureaucracies soon learns that the force they exert is non-negotiable.
...
The wordlessness of isolation, which also leaves no middle ground in which to execute human maneuvers, may be one of the most dreadful of all the many forces people use against each other.
pp. 41-42
When the poor riot in the streets or in other ways destroy the places in which they live and work, it is not an act of madness, but a result of their exclusion from citizenship, which means they have no place, no home.
p. 68
"I'll give you the walls!"
p. 121
Before I finished attempting to shake hands with the prospective students, a waiflike Asian girl with her mouth half full of cake said, "Can we get on with it? I'm bored."
I could not imagine a better group. I liked them immediately.
p. 127
The first class started badly. The young fellow who had volunteered to videotape the sessions (with an eye to making a "brilliant" documentary) telephoned to say he was going to be late, because he was on his way down from Martha's Vineyard where he had been visiting dear friends whom he had not seen for the longest time. I fired him.
p. 137
The humanities become like a mirror in which they saw their human worth, and, like all lovers, they were transformed by love.
p. 138
He showed them poems of love, seduction, commentaries on poems they read in the form of satire by later poets. "Let us read," the students demanded. And he refused.
p. 145
Henry had discovered the terrible flaw in the life of the mind, which is that knowledge does not always produce goodness.
p. 149
Abel said, "That's what Aristotle means by incontinence, when you know what's morally right, but you don't do it, because you're overcome by your passions."
p. 150
...May you never be more active than when you are doing nothing...and may you never be less lonely than when you are by yourself. (Cato)
p. 155
The moment he revealed that he was really a cellist who taught philosophy, I thought, allegro vivace, and a little faster, but not so quick that the notes did not have consequence.
p. 160
...first, the good, then prudence.
p. 166
His admission that the wish for prizes had been largely responsible for the collapse of his idea of a liberal education cannot be dismissed. Hutchins knew what should have been. Prizes, even the prize of college admission, must not rule the Clemente course.
Socrates won no prizes, started no academies, wrote not a word; he was a philosopher, the one who connected philosophy with the public world. If it can be said that Socrates bears the true responsibility for the Clemente Course, we shall not be able to measure its effect upon our students until they are dead, to borrow and old Greek view of evaluation. As winning the Nobel is not the only mark of accomplishment, going on to college is not the only route to the examined life, the pursuit of virtue, a habit of good actions, acting according to a maxim which could become general law, understanding the happiness of others as the greatest good. Although it is seldom mentioned in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Abraham Lincoln did not attend Harvard.
p. 174-175
A T.S. Eliot poem may not be immediately available to a person brought up in Appalachia or the South Bronx or East Los Angeles, but set theory has neither race nor gender, and it does not shop at Harrod's.
p. 175-176
To be able to write well requires the precise language of a logician, the aesthetic sense of a poet, and the organizational genius of a storyteller.
p. 176
While the students must learn the rules of composition, they must also gain some understanding of the limitless possibilities of language.
p. 176
The history of events without the history of ideas leads to a stream of post hoc ergo propter hoc errors, for one can only assume that succession and causation are somehow synonymous.
pp. 177-178
The purpose of studying art is to learn to see.
p. 179
from Valéry: "Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking."
pp. 180-181
...poetry is not simply sweet stuff, but dangerous, a knife at the throat of repression.
p. 181
...words do not lose their laughter over time.
p. 181
No movies should be shown to the student of literature, because they could very well confuse the student into thinking that a series of moving pictures is the equal of one word dancing.
p. 182
Mutatis mutandis, the utterly Athenian pattern--the humanities, reflective thinking, auto nomos, and the public life of citizens in a democracy--seems to survive the particularity of culture; we are indeed as different as snowflakes, as similar as snow.
p. 252
March 15, 2015
About a year ago, I tried and failed to read another book by Earl Shorris - The Life and Times of Mexico. His writing style - obtuse and self-indulgent - frustrated me so wholly that I literally, not figuratively, threw the tome across the room.
I was, therefore, discouraged when I learned he had also written this book, chosen as the inaugural work for an office book club. Shorris started the Clemente Course, which formed the template for a similar course in Bethel, taught in Yup'ik, and sponsored by the Humanities Forum.
This book was not much better (though I did manage to finish it without throwing it, so that is a marked improvement). Shorris manages to take concepts fairly familiar to me and make them almost unintelligible. His musings on the humanities are wandering and circular. He misrepresents several works he cites (not the least of which is the Closing of the American Mind). He devotes too many pages to self-promotion. His depictions of interactions with students are hard to believe. They sound a little too reminiscent of teacher-martyr movies.
Philosophically, I align quite closely with Shorris, and yet he writes so unconvincingly of these important ideas, I almost want to change my mind. I disagree with The Closing of the American Mind, but I find Bloom's ideas more compelling and well-argued than anything within this book.
I respect Shorris for his work and his devotion. I wish someone else had written this book.
I was, therefore, discouraged when I learned he had also written this book, chosen as the inaugural work for an office book club. Shorris started the Clemente Course, which formed the template for a similar course in Bethel, taught in Yup'ik, and sponsored by the Humanities Forum.
This book was not much better (though I did manage to finish it without throwing it, so that is a marked improvement). Shorris manages to take concepts fairly familiar to me and make them almost unintelligible. His musings on the humanities are wandering and circular. He misrepresents several works he cites (not the least of which is the Closing of the American Mind). He devotes too many pages to self-promotion. His depictions of interactions with students are hard to believe. They sound a little too reminiscent of teacher-martyr movies.
Philosophically, I align quite closely with Shorris, and yet he writes so unconvincingly of these important ideas, I almost want to change my mind. I disagree with The Closing of the American Mind, but I find Bloom's ideas more compelling and well-argued than anything within this book.
I respect Shorris for his work and his devotion. I wish someone else had written this book.
October 3, 2007
"You've been cheated," Earl Shorris told a classroom of poor people in New York City. "Rich people learn the humanities; you didn't....It is generally accepted in America that the liberal arts and humanities in particular belong to the elite. I think you're the elite."
In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today. Why are people poor, and why do they stay poor? Shorris argues that they lack politics, or the ability to participate fully in the public world; knowing only the immediacy and oppression of force, the poor remain trapped and isolated. To test his theory, he created an experimental school teaching art, logic, philosophy, and poetry to poor people. Shorris hoped that, by studying the humanities, his students would learn to reflect and negotiate rather than simply react--and would use this knowledge to break the cycle of poverty on their own. The results of his experiment proved nothing short of astonishing.
In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today. Why are people poor, and why do they stay poor? Shorris argues that they lack politics, or the ability to participate fully in the public world; knowing only the immediacy and oppression of force, the poor remain trapped and isolated. To test his theory, he created an experimental school teaching art, logic, philosophy, and poetry to poor people. Shorris hoped that, by studying the humanities, his students would learn to reflect and negotiate rather than simply react--and would use this knowledge to break the cycle of poverty on their own. The results of his experiment proved nothing short of astonishing.
June 2, 2008
This is a book about the Clemente Course, which was the inspiration for the Bridge Program.
November 16, 2016
An instruction manual for life.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews