Humanist Teacher Spotlight: Frederic March

By Bob Bhaerman

The Humanist Teacher Spotlight is a new feature of Humanist Network News recognizing the accomplishments of leaders and activists in humanist education.

Frederic March, past president of the Humanist Society of New Mexico, is a prolific writer and teacher who volunteers extensive support to the Kochhar Humanist Education Center (KHEC) in curriculum development, innovative educational strategies, and in accepting various writing assignments.

Fred’s credentials include many years as a humanist activist. He is a member of the Humanist Teachers Corps and has made many presentations to community groups. His articles have been published in The Humanist. His book The Bible Through the Eyes of Its Authors: A Political History of Ancient Israel and Judah (iUniverse 2006) explores the Hebrew Bible as a human creation by ancient temple priests who advocated and documented their political, social, military, moral and religious agendas for their respective nations throughout their history. Fred graduated from the City University of New York and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in engineering systems analysis and regional planning. His professional practice has focused on environmental policy and planning in many countries.

Fred has pioneered a new and innovative course for the KHEC webpage that explores the various dimensions of humanist experience. He submitted it as a pilot to help us gain experience with the Power Point voice-over format and to obtain viewer responses. This format enables any instructor to record lecture comments on each slide with good to excellent sound quality. We hope that its simplicity and near-zero cost will attract other AHA instructors to help us build a library of courses for individual and group viewing.

Fred adapted “The Many Faces of Humanism” for web presentation from the course he teaches at the University of New Mexico’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The course is now accessible from the KHEC webpage for downloading and viewing here.

The five-part course explores humanism as a dynamic philosophy committed to the quality of human life and grounded on a scientific understanding of human nature. Fred views humanism as a set of attitudes about how we seek to fulfill our lives as individuals, communities, and as a global civilization. Hence, humanism has many “faces” for expressing itself through ethics, science, religion, philosophy, psychology, politics, economics, governance and art, as well as in everyday social interactions.

Fred also is developing a second course he teaches at the UNM-Osher Institute for the KHEC website: “Case Studies in Global Environmental Policy: Realities and Controversies – A Humanist Perspective.”

Bob Bhaerman, Ed.D., is the director of the Kochhar Humanist Education Center of the American Humanist Association.