Posted on 09/09/2026 12:06:20 PM PDT by karpov
Recently, Luke Burgis, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America, posed a provocative question: “What is the strongest argument from the political Right AGAINST Great Books programs?”
In my view, the Great Books is a fine program for lifelong learning. 15,000 people a year participate in discussion groups affiliated with the Great Books Foundation. By contrast, a parallel lifelong learning project—the daily two-pages-a-day study program of the Babylonian Talmud known as Daf Yomi—drew over 90,000 people (almost all of them men) to the official completion celebration of its seven-year cycle at MetLife Stadium, with a further 7,000 at the major event in London and many thousands at others throughout the globe. So while Great Books is not the most successful classical-text-based lifelong learning program, it is hanging in there.
But for students, a Great Books program is not the best way to get the skills constitutive of secondary education. The ideas found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric about the way humans live together through speech are inexhaustible, but contemporary speech and debate classes offer more relatable examples and give students a chance to hone their PowerPoint skills.
Nor is the Great Books the best way to acquire the basic scientific education that many go to college to pursue. Yes, if you are as smart as Voltaire, you can learn calculus and mechanics from Newton and Leibniz, but even for the future Voltaires of America, contemporary calculus and physics textbooks will prove a smoother path. St. John’s College at Annapolis and Santa Fe teaches a science- and math-heavy program relying exclusively on a list of Great Books. The two campuses together graduate only a couple of hundred students a year combined.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Some years ago I purchased the super deluxe edition of the Great Books of the Western World published by the Encyclopædia Britannica. I only paid about $300 for the entire 54 set. It was brand new-all but three books were wrapped in the original plastic wrap. I am slowly reading selected volumes and hope to read them all before I die.
My guess is some grandparent bought the set for the grandkids who had no interest in reading them-so off to the used book store they went. The owner of the shop was a great guy-he even help me load them into my car!
The best argument against it would be a practical one. For example Wealth of Nations is over 900 pages with examples that most students would not be familiar with.
There are probably more modern equivalents of most of the great books that would be a more efficient use of student time.
Good point. But exposing students to ideas they are unfamiliar is a good idea. And with Google one can learn about shillings, etc.
Thomas Aquinas College in California also has a Great Books program.
When they’re centuries old it’s hard to keep up and follow without a study guide. Then there are the Great Books and the 100 must-reads in one’s lifetime. Every intellectual has their own list but most agree on the first 50. Any thing written in the last 50 years or so is disqualifying.
Then there’s the ones written by so many different authors that have one common theme and that is class differences. It could be A Passage to India, Howards End, Pride and Prejudice and Romeo/Juliet. All are written by English authors. They’re from a country where class differences are a way of life and conflict is always present. The prince or princess who falls in love with the commoner seems to touch a nerve in the underdogs amongst us. If the theme is so common every different author has their own way of regurgitating the common theme while we get mental exercises. Hopefully we’re all better people for it.
I didn’t know there was a conservative hostility to The Great Books. That sounds much more like something that would come from the left because The Great Books are considered patriarchal, homophobic, racist, sexist, outdated, etc. But maybe The Great Books referred to in the article refers to some specific leftist compilation.
I was in the HS Great Books Club in 1959-61. We read translations of ancient Greek and Roman and then jumped to Karl Marx.
Ancient Hebrews, ancient and not-so-ancient Christian and other authors were in the package. But the HS teacher had no interest in them. We ran out of time and did not get to Chairman Mao.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.