Teaching Alliance Wins Foundation Support in Minnesota

Ed. Note: Other state councils active in the support of history teaching alliances in their states include: Florida Endowment for the Humanities (two years), Wisconsin Human­ities Committee, Montana Committee for the Humanities, and Utah Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the History Teaching Alliance and available grant support, contact the HTA, 400 A Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003; 202/ 544-2422.

As the History Teaching Alliance enters its third year, it may be time to assess the different ways in which the Alliance has operated and been funded. This year in Minnesota, and elsewhere across the na­tion, HTA supporters in the teaching profession have discovered an influen­tial ally in certain of the fifty-three state humanities councils, which are state programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Originally estab­lished by Congress to address “out of school” adult audiences, the state hu­manities councils have, since 1976, been able to fund essentially the same broad spectrum of humanities projects as is currently sustained by the NEH.

With respect to the History Teaching Alliance, that expansion of the state councils’ mission means that some of the fifty-three councils have become direct­ ly involved in sustaining this effort to foster cooperation among public school teachers and their post-secondary col­leagues in history departments through­ out the country.

It is now becoming clear that human­ities council support of the History Teaching Alliance may take a variety of forms. The most direct, of course, is a grant of council funds to sustain an HTA project. In the summer of 1987, for example, Clemson University will be conducting a seminar on the US Con­stitution for teachers in the Piedmont region of South Carolina. Included in the Clemson project will be a public forum on the seminar topic and an ongoing series of seminars between uni­versity faculty and the regional teachers in the classic pattern of the Teaching Alliance. The South Carolina Commit­tee for the Humanities was sufficiently convinced of the merit of this ambitious undertaking that it has provided a ma­jor grant to sustain it throughout 1987. The project director, Professor John Johnson of the Clemson history depart­ment, worked closely with the staff of the South Carolina Committee for the Humanities from the very inception of the project and was able to demonstrate to the SCCH that his proposal was in keeping not only with the Committee’s guidelines but with several previous summer institutes for teachers that it had funded.

Some state councils are still relatively new to this emerging pattern of sustain­ing the humanities in elementary and secondary schools, so historians seeking to obtain direct funding from them should first consult the councils’ pub­lished guidelines.

In Minnesota, the relationship be­ tween the Minnesota Humanities Commission and the History Teaching Alli­ance developed along different lines. Here the Twin City area has as much population as the rest of the state. With­ in the “freeway radius” of the Twin Cities are nearly a dozen colleges and a university, as well as two major public school districts and numerous suburban jurisdictions. The result is an area rich in educational opportunity  but diffuse in leadership for public instruction. In these circumstances, the Minnesota Hu­manities Commission decided to contact the school districts to see if a coalition could be formed to create a History Teaching Alliance. Enthusiastic re­sponses in nearly every quarter encour­aged the Commission to begin seeking funding sources other than its own lim­ited regrant dollars to institute an HTA for the Twin Cities region.

This avenue of support for the alli­ance was a natural one for the state council since it has in the past frequently worked with Minnesota’s numerous private foundations to foster other endeav­ors in the humanities. What the Minne­sota Commission donated to the History Teaching Alliance, therefore, was largely staffs and council members’ time in formulating and writing grant propos­als, recruiting participant scholars, fol­lowing through with meetings with grant officers from private foundations, and coordinating the meetings of the Minnesota History Teaching Alliance. The result of all of these labors is that the alliance will begin its operations in the summer of 1987 thanks to major grants from the Bush Foundation ($43,628) and the Bigelow Foundation ($17,445).

Minnesota’s HTA will begin by con­ducting a seminar on the bicentennial of the US Constitution with a particular emphasis on the competing forces that shaped that document and some inquiry into those groups which were omitted from the 1787 charter’s benefits and guarantees. Professor Norman Rosen­berg of Macalester College will coordi­nate the seminar, which will be com­posed of roughly equal numbers of col­lege and secondary school faculty. Participants will be expected to help lead discussions, conduct joint research projects, identify potential speakers, and choose appropriate readings. The hope is for a genuine collaboration and not a traditional, teacher-directed class. If successful, this summer’s alliance will foster ongoing joint endeavors in his­tory not only for the schools but as programs designed to reach the general public.

The Minnesota Humanities Commis­sion invested its resources in the alliance because it was seen to be more than a vehicle for the enhancement of the teaching of history. The coalition en­gendered by the project in the Twin Cities may well serve as a model for similar endeavors elsewhere in Minnesota and in other academic disciplines. These same exciting prospects for the History Teaching Alliance may well ex­plain why the idea, originally promoted by the AHA, the OAH, and the NCSS (National Council for the Social Stud­ies), has now gained the attention and active support of such broad-gauged organizations as the Rockefeller and Hewlett foundations, as well as the Min­nesota sources already noted.

Even if the state humanities councils are unable to offer historians either direct funding for an alliance project or generous donations of staff time for fund raising, they may still be a consid­erable source of help. Increasingly, these fifty-three state organizations are serving as “cultural brokers” within their respective jurisdictions, coordinat­ing among existing institutions to pro­ vide needed programs for the public. In that capacity, the staffs and members of the state humanities councils have de­veloped a solid grasp of who funds what, who contacts whom, and who can organize cultural events and for how many within their domain.

So, historians seeking to create a teaching alliance in their locality would be well advised to call upon the exper­tise of their state council, if not for funds, then simply for advice on how to get started and what sources to enlist in the creation of these vital coalitions among educators.