User:Visviva/Great Books

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Great Books is an umbrella concept that, in its broadest sense, refers to a specified set of books that are believed to constitute an essential foundation in the literature of Western culture. In its more specific sense, it relates to a predominantly American educational movement that arose in the early 20th century, rose to national prominence in the postwar era, and continues in certain forms to the present day. Originating in the university, this movement has had ramifications not only for higher education, but also for K-12 education, adult education, and publishing.

In the educational context, "Great Books" can more specifically denote an approach combining a curriculum based on a set of canonical texts with a classroom methodology emphasizing open discussion with limited guidance by the instructor. Today there are a large number of undergraduate programs that continue to follow some aspects of the Great Books approach, but only four small colleges have remained entirely dedicated to the Great Books method: St. John's, Shimer, Gutenberg, and Thomas Aquinas.

History[edit]

The Great Books approach as the result of a discussion among American academics and educators, starting in the 1920s and 1930s and begun by Prof. John Erskine of Columbia University,[1] about how to improve the higher education system by returning it to the western liberal arts tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, Jacques Barzun, and Alexander Meiklejohn. The view among them was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of higher education by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought.

They were at odds both with much of the existing educational establishment and with contemporary educational theory. Educational theorists like Sidney Hook and John Dewey (see pragmatism) disagreed with the premise that there was crossover in education (e.g. that a study of philosophy, formal logic, or rhetoric could be of use in medicine or economics).

In 1919, Professor Erskine taught the first course based on the "great books" program, titled "General Honors," at Columbia University. Erskine left for the University of Chicago in the 1920s, and helped mold its core curriculum. It initially failed, however, shortly after its introduction due to fallings-out between the instructors over the best ways to conduct classes and due to concerns about the rigor of the courses. Survivors, however, include Columbia's Core Curriculum and the Common Core at Chicago, both heavily focused on the "great books" of the Western canon.


Controversy[edit]

Beginning in the 1980s, the Great Books curriculum was drawn into the popular debate about multiculturalism, traditional education, the "culture war," and the role of the intellectual in American life. Much of this debate centered on reactions to the publication of The Closing of the American Mind in 1987 by Allan Bloom.[2]

Selection criteria[edit]

Great Books started out as a list of 100 essential primary source texts considered to constitute the Western canon. This list was always intended to be tentative, although some consider it presumptuous to nominate 100 Great Books to the exclusion of all others.

Mortimer Adler lists three criteria for including a book on the list:

  • the book has contemporary significance; that is, it has relevance to the problems and issues of our times;
  • the book is inexhaustible; it can be read again and again with benefit; "This is an exacting criterion, an ideal that is fully attained by only a small number of the 511 works that we selected. It is approximated in varying degrees by the rest."[3]
  • the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.[4]

Higher education[edit]

A university or college Great Books Program is a program inspired by the Great Books movement begun in the United States in the 1920s. The aim of such programs is a return to the Western Liberal Arts tradition in education, as a corrective to the extreme disciplinary specialisation common within the academy. The essential component of such programs is a high degree of engagement with whole primary texts, called the Great Books. The curricula of Great Books programs often follow a canon of texts considered more or less essential to a student's education, such as Plato's Republic, or Dante's Divine Comedy. Such programs often focus exclusively on Western culture. Their employment of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the Great Books do not fall neatly under the prerogative of a single contemporary academic discipline. Great Books programs often include designated discussion groups as well as lectures, and have small class sizes. In general students in such programs receive an abnormally high degree of attention from their professors, as part of the overall aim of fostering a community of learning.

Great Books colleges[edit]

There are only a few true "Great Books Programs" still in operation. These schools focus almost exclusively on the Great Books Curriculum throughout enrollment and do not offer classes analogous to those commonly offered at other colleges. The first and best known of these schools is St. John's College in Annapolis and Santa Fe (program established in 1937); it was followed by Shimer College in Chicago, and Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. More recent schools with this type of curriculum include Gutenberg College in Eugene, Oregon (est. 1994), Harrison Middleton University in Tempe, Arizona (est. 1998), Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming (est. 2005), and Imago Dei College in Oak Glen, California (est. 2010).

Colleges and universities that offer Great Books curricula[edit]

Several schools maintain some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students. Some of the most prominent schools are the University of Notre Dame, Princeton University ("Humanities Sequence"), Yale University ("Directed Studies"), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Boston College, Boston University ("Core Curriculum"), Pepperdine University, Baylor University ("Great Texts"), University of San Francisco, Mercer University, University of Dallas, Gutenberg College, New Saint Andrews College, the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, Saint Anselm College, the Integral Liberal Arts program at Saint Mary's College of California (Moraga), the Hutchins School at Sonoma State University, the Great Conversation, American Conversations, Asian Conversations, and Science Conversation programs at St. Olaf College, The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Franciscan University of Steubenville, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University (Natchitoches).[5] In Canada Great Books programs exist at the College of the Humanities at Carleton University, at the University of King's College (the Foundation Year Programme), at Tyndale University College in Toronto, at the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University, Center for Liberal Arts at (Brock University) St Catharines,and at St. Thomas University (New Brunswick).

Adult education[edit]

Publishing[edit]

Television[edit]

In 1954 Dr. Mortimer Adler hosted a live weekly television series in San Francisco, comprising 52 half-hour programs entitled The Great Ideas. These programs were produced by the Institute for Philosophical Research and were carried as a public service by the American Broadcasting Company, presented by (NET) National Educational Television, the precursor to what is now PBS. Adler bequeathed these films to the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, where they are available for purchase.

In 1993 and 1994, The Learning Channel created a series of one hour programs discussing many of the great books of history and their impact on the world. It was narrated by Donald Sutherland and Morgan Freeman, amongst others.

Main article: The Learning Channel's Great Books


See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Mortimer Adler, "The Great Books, the Great Ideas, and a Lifetime of Learning," HARVARD'S LOWELL LECTURE – APRIL 11, 1990
  2. ^ John Searle, "The Storm Over the University," The New York Review of Books, December 6, 1990
  3. ^ Selecting Works for 1990 Edition
  4. ^ Adler, "Second Look", pg 142
  5. ^ http://www.nas.org/reports/gt_bks/gb_programs.htm

Bibliography[edit]

  • O'Hear, Anthony. The Great Books: A Journey through 2,500 Years of the West's Classic Literature. Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 2 edition, 2009. ISBN 978-1-933859-78-1

External links[edit]

Category:Curricula Category:Lists of books

ar:كتب عظيمة ja:グレート・ブックス

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