Quotes on Great Books Programs

"When, by these gentle ways he begins to be able to read, some easy pleasant book, suited to his capacity, should be put into his hands, wherein the entertainment, that he finds, might draw him on, and reward his pains in reading; and yet not such as should fill his head with perfectly useless trumpery, or lay the principles of vice and folly.

…

What other books there are in English of the kind of those above mentioned, fit to engage the liking of children, and tempt them to read, I do not know; but am apt to think, that children, being generally delivered over to the method of schools, where the fear of the rod is to inforce, and not any pleasure of the employment to invite, them to learn; this sort of useful books, amongst the number of silly ones that are of all sorts, have yet had the fate to be neglected; and nothing that I know has been considered of this kind out of the ordinary road of the horn-book, primer, psalter, Testament, and Bible."

"A little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored?

I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue."

"A part of my occupation, and by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in the neighboring village and have the use of my library and counsel, and make a part of my society. In advising the course of their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. So that coming to bear a share in the councils and government of their country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects of all legitimate government."

"I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their [doctrines] dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. The merit of his philosophy is in the beauties of his style. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms, uncomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they furthered blasphemously on him whom they claimed as their founder, but who would disarm them, with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite."

"Why, indeed, should a liberal arts college prescribe an identical course of study for four years for everybody independently of prior preparation and varying capacities, interests and special needs as these are revealed in the processes of instruction? The argument most often advanced for it contains a palpable fallacy. Mark van Doren, whose book is primarily a defense of the St. John's program, writes: 'If liberal education is, it is the same for everybody; the training it requires, in addition to being formal, should be homogeneous through four years — if the best is known, there is no student whom it will not fit, and each should have all of it.' What this says is that if we know what the end of education should be, then the means in every case must be the same no matter how different the individuals whom we are to educate. This is like saying that, since the aim of medicine is to produce health for everybody, if the best diet is known there is no individual whom it will not fit, and each should have all of it. In medicine an argument of this kind is an unfailing mark of a quack. From the truth that medicine has common end for everybody it does not follow that there is a common means of achieving it independently of whether a person has diabetes or leukemia, is thin or fat."

"Why are all great books and the great ideas the indispensable substance of a lifetime of learning? The great books are great because they are inexhaustibly rereadable, as few books are. Not all of them fulfill this high expectation. But many of them do; as, for example, the fifteen authors one would take to a comfortable island if one could take only fifteen authors to read over and over again in fifteen years. But the others, less great than that, approximate this high ideal of inexhaustible rereadability, or of being studiable over and over again. The great ideas--the 102 that are treated in the Syntopicon--deal with all the basic issues and problems that human beings confront when they think about the world in which they live, themselves, and their society. They are the ideas that all of us have to think about and think with. Without any understanding of them, we have no purchase on the wisdom all of us should seek."

"…the end of great books is ethical—to teach us what it means to be genuinely human.

Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes the norms of human nature. What Eliot calls 'the permanent things'—the norms, the standards—have been the concern of the poet ever since the time of Job, or ever since Homer: 'the blind man who sees,' sang of the wars of the gods with men. Until very recent years, men took it for granted that literature exists to form the normative consciousness—that is, to teach human beings their true nature, their dignity, and their place in the scheme of things. Such was the endeavor of Sophocles and Aristophanes, of Thucydides and Tacitus, of Plato and Cicero, of Hesiod and Vergil, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Dryden and Pope."

"So I think it is worthwhile to suggest the outlines of the literary discipline which induces some understanding of enduring values. For centuries, such a program of reading though never called a program—existed in Western nations. It powerfully influenced the minds and actions of the leaders of the infant American Republic, for instance. If one pokes into what books were read by the leaders of the Revolution, the framers of the Constitution and the principal men of America before 1800, one finds that nearly all of them were acquainted with a few important books: the King James version of the Bible, Plutarch’s Lives, Shakespeare, something of Cicero, something of Vergil. This was a body of literature highly normative. The founders of the Republic thought of their new commonwealth as a blending of the Roman Republic with prescriptive English institutions; and they took for their models in leadership the prophets and kings and apostles of the Bible, and the noble Greeks and Romans of Plutarch. Cato’s stubborn virtue, Demosthenes' eloquent vaticinations, Cleomenes' rash reforming impulse—these were in their minds’ eyes; and they tempered their conduct accordingly."

“…I will claim unequivocally that 'great books' are a nineteenth-century invention, a product of the Victorian cultural climate. The Victorian age was intellectually and spiritually intoxicated by the greatness of great books, comforted by what F. D. Maurice (in the title lecture of a volume published in 1856) called 'The Friendship of Books' and Alexander Ireland called the 'solace and companionship of books' (in the subtitle of his Book-Lover's Enchiridion [1883]), obsessed with the dangerous proliferation of bad books, and awash in advice never to settle for or to indulge in the second-rate, much less to permit oneself to indulge in a surfeit of journalistic ephemera. Thoreau put it punningly, 'Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.'… From this fascination with the virtue and power of books can be separated out agendas that taken together underlie our century's lingering, still often enraptured belief in 'great' books, what they are and what they can do. These underlying agendas are: 1) the religious or spiritual; 2) the educational or utilitarian; and 3) the evaluative or judgmental. It is evident that there is a very high degree of mutuality between them. Yet they are not identical. As in our modes of liberal education generally, we like to hope we are getting everything of value all together. But in so doing, we risk ending up with nothing very precise at all."

"Junior Great Book's long history of success, its flexibility to replace or supplement the traditional reading program, and its extensive replication makes Junior Great Books a program to consider when seeking to improve students' critical and interpretive thinking skills using a text-based approach. The program integrates reading and writing with the study of rich literature and contributes to improving students' reading comprehension vocabulary, writing, and critical thinking skills. Access to local trainers, use of engaging literature, flexibility of use, and its proven success contribute to the notoriety of this long-standing professional development program."

"What then do today’s learners gain by studying the Great Books, the great works of the West and the world in general? For starters, they encounter excellence and permanent, universal values. Even if the excellence of a particular work is not appreciated, readers sharpen their understanding of what they believe excellence to be. While objective criteria, or standards, do exist in art and literature, the Great Books can support a more subjective, diverse view of culture - so long as excellence is the aspiration. Permanent, universal values must be encountered in the context of the promotion of a common good, a common culture."

"An education in the Great Books is a potpourri of conflicting views, a set of strongly articulated arguments that continuously strive to refute other views that purportedly comprise a single 'tradition.' The 'Western tradition' is a ferocious and ongoing set of disagreements about the most basic human beliefs."

"NAS identified five problems in U.S. society that are amplified when colleges limit students’ exposure to good books:

1. An inability to distinguish 'the truth' from 'my truth'
2. A tendency to ignore aspects of the world that fall outside the bounds of race, class, and gender
3. A shallow understanding of the human heart
4. A lack of humility and willingness to learn
5. A sense of resentment toward those who are prosperous"