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