For many, university education is a pathway to a career. But other object, feeling higher education ought to be focused on learning and discussing the great ideas of history–in particularly Western civilization. Robert Hutchins, one of the founders of the Great Books program stated in The University of Utopia, “The object of the educational system, taken as
a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make
a living. It is to produce responsible citizens”.
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;
- 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.
[From Wikipedia]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 1920’s, and helped mold its core curriculum. The Great Books program was
developed at the University of Chicago by Stringfellow Barr,
Scott Buchanan, Robert Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler in the
mid-1930s as an alternative form of education to the then rapidly changing
undergraduate curriculum.
Many may criticize the list for being primarily Dead White Males
“Don’t Just Do Something”, Hutchins explained, “…the Great Books [are] the
most promising avenue to liberal education if only because they are
teacher-proof.”
Mercer College maintains an annotated list of colleges that offer some form of the great books program. Included are:
-
- Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario
- Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario
- Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
- Malaspina University, Nanaimo, British
Columbia - University of King’s
College, Halifax, Nova Scotia
-
United States
- Biola University, La Mirada, California
- Boston University, Boston, Massachuesetts
- Central Washington University, Ellensburg,
Washington - The College of Saint Thomas More, Fort
Worth, Texas - Columbia College, Columbia
University, New York, New York - Gutenberg College, Eugene, Oregon
- Kentucky State University , Frankfort,
Kentucky - Lawrence University, Appleton,
Wisconsin - Lynchburg College, Lynchburg,
Virginia - Mercer University, Macon, Georgia
- Northwestern State University of
Louisiana, Natchitoches, Louisiana - Rose Hill College, Aiken, South
Carolina - Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New
Hampshire - St. John’s College [MD],
Annapolis, Maryland - St. John’s College [NM], Santa
Fe, New Mexico - The Graduate Institute at St. John’s
College, Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico - Saint Mary’s College of California,
Moraga, California - Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota
- Seaver College, Pepperdine
University, Malibu, California - Shimer College, Waukegan, Illinois
- Southern Virginia College,
Buena Vista, Virginia - Temple University, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania - Thomas Aquinas College, Santa
Paula, California - The University of Chicago
Center for Continuing Studies, Chicago, Illinois - College of Arts and Sciences, University
of North Texas, Denton, Texas - University of Notre Dame, South Bend,
Indiana - University of Dallas, Irving, Texas
- The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Wesleyan University, Middletown,
Connecticut - Whitman College, Walla Walla,
Washington
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