ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with two opening notes on humanistic method. The first note is on “the lecture” as a humanistic method of communication and conversation. The second note is on the humanistic approach and sense of order in the description and clarification of concepts. These two approaches are by no means mutually exclusive, but there is a particular order in the second sense that requires a certain patience and even modesty, allowing things to begin and end in the classic poetic sense of being in medias res, “in the middle of things.” In the landscape of the academic field of education in the United States, the common sense of social and applied science—from quantitative to qualitative to mixed—is fixed. The author wants to avoid treating the humanities exclusively as a professional academic discipline or a series of anxious questions about “higher education.”.
