ABSTRACT
From what I’ve said so far, it’s obvious that ours is not a conventional course in literature, nor is it designed to sharpen basic literacy skills, encourage further schooling, or promote any particular views of history or society. We use reading and writing chiefly as a means to conversation, the vital center of the program. When we assess the careers of Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X, we are sorting out our own ethical positions, using these heroic figures and historic events as a means of building mutual respect and a collective public conscience, taking responsibility for the ideas and opinions of one another. Something like that, of course, is what the businessman I’ve quoted earlier learned in his ten weeks. He did not need our course to teach him how to read or write more fluently, but to see himself from a new perspective, part of a wider community than he had imagined.
