Great Books and the Art of Reading
Author(s): Ralph Gilbert Ross
Source: Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors (1915-1955) ,
Winter, 1948, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 1948), pp. 680-697
Published by: American Association of University Professors
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40220325
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
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,GREAT BOOKS AND THE ART OF READING
By RALPH GILBERT ROSS
New York University
The substitution of original works of importance for the tra-
ditional textbook has been gaining favor steadily in American
colleges and universities and has resulted in at least one program of
major importance in adult education. A variety of questions
about reading in general and about special reading projects have
been bandied about the whole educational world. In this essay
I have attempted an appraisal of the basic issues, starting with
the University of Chicago program, and treating the whole in
terms of education.
The startling growth of the educational movement known as
Great Books classes has aroused a controversy that is at once edu-
cational, scientific, social, and even political. Yet there has been
little serious evaluation of the matter itself because issues of all
sorts, some scarcely pertinent, have been intruded, and because
most of the writers are either adherents so naive as to seem mes-
sianic or critics so sure of their outright condemnation that they
have never bothered to sit in a single class in Great Books (there are,
of course, a few honorable exceptions on both sides but they have had
too little part in forming general public opinion). Indeed we are
nearing the stage where writing about the Great Books movement
will be a profession; we have already reached the point at which it
is often a profession of faith.
Disentangling the elements of the controversy is more difficult
every day. The bare history of the movement, at least, seems un-
equivocal. On the college level Columbia University and St. John's
College pioneered in Great Books classes, St. John's going so far
as to make a four-year study of one hundred important books a
compulsory and basic ingredient of the college curriculum. Cooper
Union tried the procedure with adult groups and the Muhlenberg
Branch of the New York Public Library had its own variant for a
This content downloaded from
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, GREAT BOOKS AND THE ART OF READING 68 1
number of years. University College of the University of Chicago
gave it an important place in its adult program, as did the School
of Social Studies in San Francisco, and St. John's College fostered
adult classes in several communities. The public library systems of
many large cities took up the cause and offered free classes in great
books in their branches: Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland,
Indianapolis, and latterly New York and Newark. In per-
haps all of these cities this is the only large scale venture in adult
education directly sponsored by public libraries. Although they
allow rooms in branch libraries to be used for a variety of edu-
cational purposes, under the supervision of the branch librarian,
and permit the schools to carry on educational programs in their
buildings, they seem to feel that theirs is a special case: they are
not educational institutions per se; Great Books classes are a way
of getting people to read books, and that, after all, is the purpose
of libraries.
Behind this seemingly simple educational growth there are fac-
tors that complicate appraisal. The University of Chicago has
been the moving force in the expansion of the program; since the
community groups in Great Books are free to the general adult
public, the teachers (or "leaders" as they are usually called) are
not paid: they are volunteers from other occupations, not pro-
fessional teachers. And they are trained for their work by Chicago,
which seems prepared to send professional teachers, paid by the
University, almost anywhere if there is a group of volunteer leaders
to train. The group at the University of Chicago that initiated
the program and their friends at St. John's were for the most part
active in the neo-Thomist revival of a few years back, and there is
a strong feeling that their educational ventures are saturated with
their general philosophy. Attacks, predicated on the belief that
emphasis in these classes is almost exclusively on the past, have
often focused on the list of readings. So, for example, in a typical
list of "great books" there are only two works written in the twen-
tieth century; and in the six-year course of readings used by com-
munity groups there are only four from the twentieth century (one
of which is Einstein on relativity) out of a total of forty-eight.
As a result both of the nature of the program and its institutional
and philosophical connections, supporters readily exhibit the fervor
This content downloaded from
14.139.203.20 on Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Author(s): Ralph Gilbert Ross
Source: Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors (1915-1955) ,
Winter, 1948, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 1948), pp. 680-697
Published by: American Association of University Professors
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40220325
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact .
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
American Association of University Professors is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors (1915-1955)
This content downloaded from
14.139.203.20 on Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:34:56 UTC
,GREAT BOOKS AND THE ART OF READING
By RALPH GILBERT ROSS
New York University
The substitution of original works of importance for the tra-
ditional textbook has been gaining favor steadily in American
colleges and universities and has resulted in at least one program of
major importance in adult education. A variety of questions
about reading in general and about special reading projects have
been bandied about the whole educational world. In this essay
I have attempted an appraisal of the basic issues, starting with
the University of Chicago program, and treating the whole in
terms of education.
The startling growth of the educational movement known as
Great Books classes has aroused a controversy that is at once edu-
cational, scientific, social, and even political. Yet there has been
little serious evaluation of the matter itself because issues of all
sorts, some scarcely pertinent, have been intruded, and because
most of the writers are either adherents so naive as to seem mes-
sianic or critics so sure of their outright condemnation that they
have never bothered to sit in a single class in Great Books (there are,
of course, a few honorable exceptions on both sides but they have had
too little part in forming general public opinion). Indeed we are
nearing the stage where writing about the Great Books movement
will be a profession; we have already reached the point at which it
is often a profession of faith.
Disentangling the elements of the controversy is more difficult
every day. The bare history of the movement, at least, seems un-
equivocal. On the college level Columbia University and St. John's
College pioneered in Great Books classes, St. John's going so far
as to make a four-year study of one hundred important books a
compulsory and basic ingredient of the college curriculum. Cooper
Union tried the procedure with adult groups and the Muhlenberg
Branch of the New York Public Library had its own variant for a
This content downloaded from
14.139.203.20 on Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
, GREAT BOOKS AND THE ART OF READING 68 1
number of years. University College of the University of Chicago
gave it an important place in its adult program, as did the School
of Social Studies in San Francisco, and St. John's College fostered
adult classes in several communities. The public library systems of
many large cities took up the cause and offered free classes in great
books in their branches: Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland,
Indianapolis, and latterly New York and Newark. In per-
haps all of these cities this is the only large scale venture in adult
education directly sponsored by public libraries. Although they
allow rooms in branch libraries to be used for a variety of edu-
cational purposes, under the supervision of the branch librarian,
and permit the schools to carry on educational programs in their
buildings, they seem to feel that theirs is a special case: they are
not educational institutions per se; Great Books classes are a way
of getting people to read books, and that, after all, is the purpose
of libraries.
Behind this seemingly simple educational growth there are fac-
tors that complicate appraisal. The University of Chicago has
been the moving force in the expansion of the program; since the
community groups in Great Books are free to the general adult
public, the teachers (or "leaders" as they are usually called) are
not paid: they are volunteers from other occupations, not pro-
fessional teachers. And they are trained for their work by Chicago,
which seems prepared to send professional teachers, paid by the
University, almost anywhere if there is a group of volunteer leaders
to train. The group at the University of Chicago that initiated
the program and their friends at St. John's were for the most part
active in the neo-Thomist revival of a few years back, and there is
a strong feeling that their educational ventures are saturated with
their general philosophy. Attacks, predicated on the belief that
emphasis in these classes is almost exclusively on the past, have
often focused on the list of readings. So, for example, in a typical
list of "great books" there are only two works written in the twen-
tieth century; and in the six-year course of readings used by com-
munity groups there are only four from the twentieth century (one
of which is Einstein on relativity) out of a total of forty-eight.
As a result both of the nature of the program and its institutional
and philosophical connections, supporters readily exhibit the fervor
This content downloaded from
14.139.203.20 on Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
