Great Books

Great Books refers to a curriculum and a book list that came about 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, 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, 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.

Related Topics:
Curriculum - Academic - Educators - 1920s - 1930s - Columbia University - Higher education - Western - Liberal arts - Robert Hutchins - Mortimer Adler - Stringfellow Barr - Scott Buchanan - Alexander Meiklejohn - College

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Many of those involved with the Great Books curriculum had a populist agenda, stemming from their backgrounds in the Socialist movement. 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).

Related Topics:
Populist - Socialist - Movement - Sidney Hook - John Dewey - Pragmatism - Crossover - Philosophy - Logic - Rhetoric - Medicine - Economics

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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 many critics considered it presumptuous and laughable to nominate 100 Great Books to the exclusion of all others.

Related Topics:
Primary source - Western Canon

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

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• 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; and
• 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.