Humanist profile.

Pat Duffy Hutcheon 2000 Humanist of the Year of the Humanist Association of Canada 

"I have thought for some time that the enduring popularity of the quest for certainty--and the dualism that justifies and perpetuates itmis highly dangerous in the modern world."

--Pat Duffy Hutcheon in the July/August 2001 issue of the Humanist

Raised during the Great Depression on a drought-stricken Alberta farm, Pat Duffy Hutcheon grew up to became a country schoolteacher. She then, over a thirty-year period, became an early practitioner of work-study, acquiring higher degrees as she worked her way up the teaching career ladder. She earned a B.A. in education, followed by an M.A. in sociology and anthropology from the University of Calgary, then went on to study sociology at Yale University and at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she completed her Ph.D. in 1976. Having acquired broad experience teaching at multiple levels of the public school system, she rose to teach courses in the sociology of education and early childhood education at the University of Regina and the University of British

Columbia. Hutcheon later served as a research advisor to the Health Promotion Branch of the Canadian Department of Health and Welfare and, following early retirement from university teaching, served as a research consultant and as a director of the Vanier Institute of the Family. She is now writing full time. Her most recent books include Leaving the Cave (1 g96), Building CharaCter and Culture (1999), and The Road to Reason: Landmarks in the Evolution of Humanist Thought (2001). She was honored with the Humanist Association of Canada's Humanist of the Year Award in 2000 and the American Humanist Association's Humanist Distinguished Service Award in 2001. Most recently, she served on the drafting committee for Humanism and Its Aspirations: Humanist Manifesto III.

HUMANISM is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values--be they religious, ethical, social, or politicaluhave their source in human nature, experience, and culture. Humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny.