The Great Books Program

THE GREAT BOOKS PROGRA A National Survey LIBRARY NATiONAL OPINION RESEARCH CE.NTER Ul1iv"rsicycf Ch!';C!l1u COpy NATIONAL OPINION RESEARCH CENTER University of Chicago Report No. 68 September., ) 1958 NATIONAL OPINION RESEARCH CENTER University of Chicago Clyde W. Hart t Director Herbert Goldstein, Business Manager Survey No. 408 James A. Davis , Senior Study Director with the assistance of: Lathrop Vickery Beale and Ruth Ursula Gebhard This study was supported by the Fund for Adult Education. In childhood and youth their study, and what philosophy they learn should be su ted to their tender years: du ring th is pe riod wh ile the y are grow- ing up towards manhood, the chief and spec ial care should be given to the t r bodies that they may have them to use in the service of philosophy; as life advances and the intellect begins to mature , let them increase the gymnastics of the soul.. The Republ ic Book VI - i ACKNOHLEDGNENTS The II credits" for any national survey bulk as large as those of an M. M. musical. We should like, however, to note the special contributions of the following: G. H. Griffiths, Vice-President of the Fund for Adult Education and Professor Carl Hovland of yale University, research consultant to the Fund, were constant aids throughout the study. At one time or another most of the staff of the Great Books Foundation were involved in our survey, but we should like to thank Dr. James Jarrett , Mr. Drace Johnson, Mrs. Frieda Goldman , and Miss Lily Durr for their special assistance. In addition, Mr. Leonard Stein of the University of Chicago Home Study Center; Professor James Coleman of the University of Chicago; Professor Peter H. Rossi of the University of Chicago; Hr. Charles E. Martin, New City, New York; and Professor M. R. Trabue , helped :us in many ways. The entire staff of the National Opinion Research Center contributed in one way or another to the study, but special debts of gratitude are owed to: Mrs. Mary Booth , who supervised the sampling and initial coding, Mrs. Grace Lieberman, who supervised the field work; Irene Skolnick , Carolyn Goeti tah Field , Nrs. Ada Farber Jonathan Wallach , and Sultan Hashmi , our merry and meticulous coding crew; Harold Levy, Sanford Abrams , and Fred Meier , of NORC' s machine room staff; IDrris Sunshine , graduate student of Northwestern University; Joseph Zelan, our indefatigable research assistant; lks. Georgia Grann, tireless proofreader; and Mrs. Ada B. Caplow and Mrs. Nella V. Siefert, probably the best typists around. Although not members of the project staff, Clyde W. Hart, Director, and Jacob J. Feldman, Senior Study Di- rector at NORC, were continual and vital consultants. Since this is an evaluation study with some potential implica- tions for policy decisions in the world of adult education, the following responsibilities should be specifically acknowledged. Although staff members of the Fund for Adult Education and the Great Books Foundation were shown certain first drafts for their comments, the entire report is the sole responsibility of the National Opinion Res atch Center, and ultimately, that of the Study Director. Part A, and Chapter I of Part B were done in entirety by the Study Director; the chapters on community involvement and reading were essentially the work of Lathrop V. Beale, and the remaining chapters were done by Ruth Ursula Gebhard and James A. Davis, jointly. Blame should be addressed to the proper person, but since the three of us consulted together day in and day out, any credit should go jointly to the three authors. James A. Davis August , 1958 . ... .. ... .. .. .. ." . ... .. .... ... ... .. .. ., .. CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION PART A. THE PARTICIPANTS Chapter I. WHAT ARE THEY LIKE? I . II. HHAT DO THEY WANT FROM THE PROGRAM? II .. III. WHAT DO THEY SAY THEY GET FRON THE PROGRA? . PART B. THE EFFECTS OF PARTICIPATION KNOWLEDGE II. ESTHETICS 112 III. READING 130 IV. VALUES AND IDEOLOGIES 158 COMMITY INVOLVEMENT 177 PART C. THE DISCUSSION GROUP I. WHAT ARE THE DISCUSSION GROUPS LIKE? 216 II. THE ROLE STRUCTURE OF THE DISCUSSION GROUP 232 III. SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ROLE PARTICIPANTS 242 SUMRY 252 APPENDIX 1. THE GREAT BOOKS READINGS. 258 APPENDIX 2. THE QUESTIONNAIRE 262 INTRODUCTION Back round In the summer of 1957 , the Fund for Adult Education , an independent educational foundation established by the Ford Foundation , commissioned the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago to make a study of the Great Books program. The major purpose of the study is to a!6ss the effects of participation in the program in order to provide information to guide future policy in the field of adult education. The study specifically excludes any consideration of the administration or functioning of the Great Books Foundation, which sponsors the program , but rather, is concentrated on the participants and their discussion groups. The Great Books program itself is so well known that it need not be described in detail. Great Books, which was originally developed by Mortimer Adler. and Robert M. Hutchins, then of: the Universify of Chicago, is a national program for tho liberal education of adults. In 1957-1958 it consisted of some 960 discussion groups dispersed through the ' United States, with additional groups in Canada and overseas. Each group meets every other week from September to June and at each meeting the members discuss a specific selection which they have read before the meeting. These readings are organized into blocks of one year each and , in theory, should be read in sequence. However, since members often enter on- going groups, the correlation between specific readings and years in the program is less than perfect. In our study we have focused on total number of years completed rather than on the specific readings. The groups vary in size (from around five to around 35 with an average of about 11 in our sample); in sponsorship (most are affiliated with public libraries , but a number are sponsored by churches, business firms, and individuals); and in leadership (some have a single leader, most have co-leaders, and a few rotate the leadership with each meeting); but generally they follow the pattern of small, informal discussion groups. In order to understand the nature of the program, we should stress the following characteristics. The leaders are not formally trained teachers, but a number have had brief training courses sponsored by the Great Books Foundation and many are long-time participants who are now leading groups studying earlier years of the readings. The members do not pay any tuition or get any degree or certificate for completing the program. In fact , no one can " complete" the program as additional years of readings are always available , currently up to the 14th year. Members are encouraged to buy the readings from the Foundation but are not required to do so. The Great Books Foundation itself is a non- profit organization which attempts to stimulate groups and provides readings and publicity materials. It also provides advice and help to groups from the national office or through local community coordinators in larger citie3. Sone orcoordinators have are otherfull-time members jobs of thein Foundation adult staff, education. some are voluntee Procedures During December, 1957, NORC interviewers attended the meetings of 172 groups, sampled in a manner described below. Members had not been informed before the meeting that they were to participate in the research that night, although SOme knew their group would be called on at some time. The currcnt curriculum of reading is reproduced as Appendix 1 of this report. Each member of the sampled groups filled out the self-administered questionnaire which is reproduced as Appendix 2 to this report. By and large, we found cooperation to be good, although a number of groups were visibly dis- appointed that they had to forgo their discussion, only one protocol was re- jected because inspection indicated that the writer did not give serious cooperation. One other schedule, from a member whose physical handicap resulted in an illegible questionnaire , was excluded , leaving a total of 1 909 cases from 172 groups. The que.stionnaires were coded and punched onto IBM cards for analysis. Al though we do have some informal reports by the NORC interviewers, the materials presented here are based on statistical analyses of these cards, except for Chapter I in Part C. Coding, punching, and card cleaning were completed by June, 1958, and analysis and write-up took place during June , July, and early August, 1958. Sample Our sample is a stratified (by year of reading) probability sample of the Great Books discussion groups which in November and December, 1957, were meeting in MORC "primary sampling units. Since each member of the sampled groups was asked to fill out a schedule, the number of individuals each group contributed to the total sample was obviously proportional to its size, hence our sample is also representative of "individuals" as well as groups, although this procedure resul ts in the sample of individuals being heavily clustered. NORC is set. up to take probability samples of the general population of the United States. In order to do so, it maintains a permanent field staff of trained interviewers in a national sample of counties and standard metropolitan areas. These are known as " primary sampl ing units . 11 The counties were select- ed in such a way that by weighting the interviews, national estimates for a cross section of the general population are efficiently and accurately obtained, subject , of course , to random sampling error. For technical reasons which are inherent in any such sample drawn by any research agency, bias is introduced when one attempts to sample a universe with a relatively small number of individuals such as Great Books groups.

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