GREAT BOOKS PROGRAM

The American Dream and Self-Education

The 1950s was a decade in which middle-class Americans sought to improve themselves through self-education. In this country the path of upward social mobility is clear-cut. First comes prosperity, then respectability, and one of the components of respectability is a liberal arts education. It was too late for newly prosperous adults to return to the classroom to get the knowledge they imagined they had missed the first time through, if they had been lucky enough to receive a college education: only about 6 percent of adults had college degrees in 1950. Self-education was the next best alternative, and it was offered through the highly touted Great Books program.

Bringing the Great Books to the Masses

The Great Books Foundation was started in 1947 by Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, "to provide the means of general liberal education to all adults." The foundation boasted a distinguished team of experts, including philosopher-historian Mortimer J. Adler. By 1950 there were some twelve hundred Great Books programs in four hundred cities with about twenty-five thousand participants. Adults ranging in occupation from cab driver to clergyman met in classrooms, YMCAs, churches, and homes to discuss those works that the foundation had designated as "Great Books."

Group Discussions

Each group had a trained leader who led the discussions. The group leader did not lecture, for the purpose of the program in Hutchins's words was to allow people to participate in the "Great Conversation" of world culture. Hutchins believed that through open discussion of the ideas presented in the books a kind of cultural vocabulary was formed, allowing the group to communicate in an enlightened way and to appreciate and advance their cultural traditions.

Publishing the Great Books

The curriculum of the Great Books program was traditional. It was heavy on ancient Greek and Roman writers and on Renaissance culture and, as some critics pointed out, was noticably light on American literature. In 1952 the Encyclopaedia Britannica brought out a fifty-four-volume set called Great Books of the Western World, edited by Hutchins. The set sold for $249.50 and included the works of seventy-four authors from Homer to Sigmund Freud.

GREAT BOOKS PROGRAMS

GREAT BOOKS PROGRAMS. In 1919, Columbia professor John Erskine began teaching a radical course on literature's "great books," discarding the weightiness of scholarship to allow students to engage in critical conversation about the texts. In 1931 his former student Mortimer Adler, with President Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago, began a similar course. Combating trends toward academic specialization, they sought to provide core humanistic training and a democratic foundation for society. Widely implemented by universities, programs based on the "Great Books" remain a key part of core curricula. Hutchins and Adler created a program for adults in 1947 with the establishment of the Great Books Foundation. Based on cooperative learning, or "shared inquiry," the program motivates participants to think critically about the texts, spurred by curiosity rather than the proddings of an instructor. Great Books discussion groups were especially popular with the middle class through the 1950s–1970s, but interest tapered off in the 1980s. The foundation started its Junior Program in 1962, expanding it to the classroom in 1992 to integrate reading, writing, and discussion. The foundation's goals include enlarging the Great Books canon to include non-Western works and rejuvenating interest in discussion groups. Hutchins and Adler's legacy continued through their editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, used extensively in seminar courses and discussion groups.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, Mortimer J. Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind. New York: Macmillan, 1988.

Ashmore, Harry S. Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.

"The Great Conversation Continues: The Great Books Foundation 1947–1997." Chicago: Great Books Foundation, 1997.

Meaghan M.Dwyer