Since the dawn of time, humans have been creating. From homes and tools to literature and art, people have always found ways to put their mark on the world. These artifacts give us a glimpse of how early civilizations functioned, show what the people at the time valued, and what aided them in either growing to new heights or crumbling to the ground. Understanding these ancient cultures helps those today figure out what molded the world. The best way to understand something is to take a deeper look into the ancient world and there’s no better place to do that than in Honors Humanities.
Honors Humanities is a year-long course offered to juniors and seniors that explores different regions of the world, starting as early as the Paleolithic period and progressing to the common era. The course has been around for almost 50 years, however, the course hasn’t stayed the same throughout. Holly Winget, one of the instructors of the class, took Humanities in her junior and senior years. She says that when she took the class “it used to exist as European and American, so every other year was either European Humanities or American Humanities”. This held for many years until the original humanities teacher, John Fogarty, expanded the course to include Asia and the Middle East — this created Humanities: Ancient World and Humanities: Modern World. The course would keep the two-year structure until much more recently when Mrs.Winget and another instructor, Nicollette Hernke, had to condense the course to only one year; the course now ranges from “4.5 million years ago to as close to the modern era as we can get”. Even with many changes the goal of the class has always stayed the same: cultivating students’ minds to view the interconnectedness between people and their creations.
Besides being a course full of complexity and nuances, there’s another aspect of Humanities that makes it quite different from other classes: the projects. In the class, students are expected to complete two semester-long projects that relate to the time period they are studying. These projects can be anything from recreating ancient Egyptian tools to constructing instruments to even recreating famous works of art like Starry Night by Van Gogh or Women with a Parasol by Monet. Each project must take a student 40 hours to complete and they need to become an expert in the history and craftsmanship. They then need to make a presentation and poster board so they can present and teach what they created. These projects are meant to be difficult and challenge students to create something within the constraints of the ancient world — all in order to expand people’s understanding of just how early people lived. The project even helps teach students fundamental skills like woodworking, weaving, and pottery.
For decades only the people in the school ever had the luxury of seeing and learning about the projects the Humanities students would accomplish. But, this is no longer the case. Matthew Stelter, the head of teen and adult programs at the Cannon Falls Library, caught wind of these presentations and decided to create a program for the community to show them off. Stelter felt that “With the amount of passion and hard work these students put into their projects, I thought it would be great to have the chance to hear about what they had done and open it up to the public”. People in the community are interested in learning more about the world. This program, along with these projects, takes everything we learn in Humanities and shares it with the town. The program will be on January 31st from 4:30 – 6:00 and will showcase 4 students’ projects from this year (Chinese Guqin, Ancient Bows, Scandinavian Skis, and Nordic Purses).
Humanities is a worthwhile course that has inspired students for decades. From having committed teachers who have taken the course in their youth to projects that teach so much about early people’s ways, this class does it all. An analogy that sums up this class perfectly comes from Mrs. Winget: “Nobody needs gravy, nobody needs frosting but it makes food so much better.” Students aren’t required to take Humanities but if they do, they in turn gain an immense amount of appreciation for every civilization and the world around them. This appreciation will follow them for the rest of their lives; in college and jobs, in relationships and self-growth. The world is interconnected and to understand these connections is to understand ourselves.
