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Great Books

Great Books. A Brief History. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Robert M. Hutchins and Maude Phelps Hutchins on the steps at the President's House, 1929. -Photo from the University of Chicago Library. “Boy wonder” or “Enfant terrible?’. Robert Maynard Hutchins College administrator at 21

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Great Books

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  1. Great Books A Brief History

  2. Robert Maynard Hutchins Robert M. Hutchins and Maude Phelps Hutchins on the steps at the President's House, 1929. -Photo from the University of Chicago Library

  3. “Boy wonder” or “Enfant terrible?’ • Robert Maynard Hutchins • College administrator at 21 • President of University of Chicago by 30 • Believed a liberal education rooted in the classics should be the mission of higher education, not vocational preparation • Failed to institute this philosophy throughout the university • Settled for four-year degree program based on what he termed, “The Great Books” (McArthur).

  4. The Great Books Foundation • Established in 1947 • Co-founded with colleague Mortimer Adler • Wanted to create “a national community of thinking people” (McArthur, 1987, p. 27). • Essentially a recommended reading list • Used in formal and informal educational settings • Based on Shared Inquiry discussion protocol, which resembles the Socratic method

  5. Great Books Anthologies • Include fiction and non-fiction • Feature essays, poetry, plays, short stories, novels • According to the Great Books Foundation, the works “… raise fundamental and enduring questions about the human experience … they have shaped the way people think about perennial concerns such as the nature of justice, truth, and beauty (p.5).

  6. A List? • "There is no List with a capital L. The great books are simply the books which deal most incisively, most eloquently, most universally, and most timelessly with man and his world."Milton Mayer, one of the early proponents of the Great Books movement

  7. Some Sample Titles: • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald • The Declaration of Independence • Antigoneby Sophocles • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson • “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe • “Everything that Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor

  8. Junior Great Books • Added in 1967 • Allows students and teachers in K-12 classrooms to use a liberal studies approach

  9. Great Books and Adult Education • Book groups • Continuing Education • Professional development workshops, retreats, and special events for educators and others • Great Books Chicago conference • Prison Outreach

  10. Shared Inquiry/the Socratic Method • According to Foster (as cited in American Council on Education, 1994) • The teacher does not impart knowledge to the students … • The teacher draws out the student’s own insights by asking questions … • Insights are sharpened and deepened through a dialogic process, a shared inquiry, among peers in which the teacher becomes one of the sharers in the inquiry • The practice of free inquiry is refined by participants using their own experience, intelligence, and analytical capacities … • Shared inquiry requires openness to other possibilities, to others’ points of view … (p. 224 – 225).

  11. References • American Council on Education. (1994). Forging connections in adult higher education. National conference on alternative and external degree programs for adults (14th, San Francisco, California, October 6-8, 1994). . (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED413445) Retrieved September 14, 2009, from ERIC database. • Great Books Foundation. (n.d.). How to start a Great Books discussion group. Retrieved September 14, 2009, from http://www.greatbooks.org/index.php?id=819 • McArthur, B. (1987, April 1). Revisiting Hutchins and the higher learning in America. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED286394) Retrieved September 14, 2009, from ERIC database.

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