The Great Books and the Burgeoning of Citizenship Katherine A

“I Sit with Shakespeare and He Winces Not”: The Great Books and the Burgeoning of Citizenship Katherine A. Kersten Katherine Kersten is Center of the American Experiment’s distinguished senior fellow for cultural studies and a former chair of the board of directors. She holds a law degree from the University of Minnesota, an M.B.A. from Yale, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame. A columnist for the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune, she is coauthor—with American Experiment President Mitch Pearlstein—of Close to Home: Celebrations and Critiques of America’s Experiment in Freedom. For generations, the Great Books University of Notre Dame. The have formed the indispensable program was a three-year curriculum foundation of a liberal education in the Great Books, modeled on the in American universities. Our famous University of Chicago forebears viewed acquaintance program established in the 1930s and with the intellectual giants of our 1940s by Mortimer Adler and Robert civilization—Homer, Plato, Hutchins. We read the classics, which Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, and philosopher David Hume defined as others—as vital to a good books that have withstood the test of education. They believed that time. Probing insights of these knowledge of the classics seminal texts, we discovered that they cultivates students’ minds, have endured because they have promoting intellectual discipline raised the most profound questions and instilling wisdom. In addition, about the human condition and they held that acquaintance with offered the most eloquent answers the philosophical roots of Western Today, unfortunately, a classical morality and law prepares students liberal education is no longer available for responsible democratic to most American students. A variety citizenship. of forces—most obviously the rise of I was the beneficiary of just an aggressive academic such a liberal education. In 1973, I “multiculturalism —have pushed the graduated from the Program of classics from center stage to the Liberal Studies (PLS) at the corners of the academic world. But in AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 the face of this disturbing trend, schools have adopted heavily there is also good news. In the last politicized, anti-intellectual few years, a growing number of “Afrocentric” curricula. Some have colleges and universities have even promoted “Black English,’ or begun to establish new Great ghetto dialect, as black students’ Books programs, or dust off and “authentic” mode of expression. At revive old ones. Some of these the college level, minority students programs focus exclusively on the often fare little better. Generally, Western intellectual tradition, university “ethnic studies” programs while others include the study of emphasize second-rate writers with an great non-Western texts. Scholarly ideological ax to grind, instead of organizations committed to liberal acquainting students with challenging learning have sprung up to works of real cultural significance. spearhead this effort. Many policy makers have Equally heartening is the attempted to justify this kind of nascent movement to bring education on grounds of its alleged classical liberal education to low- racial and ethnic “sensitivity.” In fact, income and minority Americans. however, this approach to schooling Today, thanks to the efforts of is patronizing and condescending, for visionary educators, an unlikely it fails to prepare low-income and array of students is beginning to minority students either for informed encounter—and embrace—the citizenship or for social integration. If classics. Among them are black students are to grasp their true and Hispanic community college potential as human beings and students in Chicago; Cherokee citizens, they must know something Indians in Oklahoma; Yup’ik of the great intellectual monuments Eskimos in Alaska: and homeless of their civilization. men and women in South Bend, American history is replete with Indiana. examples of the liberating power of The rise of liberal education classical education for poor and opportunities for Americans like disenfranchised individuals. For these marks a welcome reversal of example, before the Civil War, slaves a contemporary were led to contemplate their trend. For in recent years, this potential claims to freedom by country’s academic establishment studying the Bible. Eloquent black has generally failed to promote leaders like Frederick Douglass and education of substance for low- W E. B. Du Bois credited classical income and minority citizens. In philosophical and literary texts with inner cities, elementary and stimulating their understanding of secondary schools have tolerated justice and cultivating their oratorical abysmally low standards of skills. In eighteenth- and nineteenth- academic performance. At the century England, the story was same time, state and local similar. There, the laboring governments have resisted school classes—so long denied choice legislation that would give education—strove mightily to floundering students the appropriate for themselves the very opportunity to enroll in private books that had fitted the students at schools. In many urban areas, Eton and Cambridge for their ruling AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 role. Like Douglass and Du Bois, across the country have increasingly the leaders of the groups that did moved to replace Homer with black most to dismantle England’s class novelist Toni Morrison, and system and extend the franchise Shakespeare with Chicana writer were the products of classical Sandra Cisneros. liberal education. Over and over, history has demonstrated that, as The Revival of the Canon the University of Chicago’s Robert The Forces at Work Hutchins put it, “the best In the past decade, the worst education for the best is the best excesses of the 1 1960s have come education for all.” under scrutiny. In some quarters, this has led to a renewed interest in the The Demise of the Canon benefits of classical liberal education. To understand the burgeoning As a result, a number of colleges and revival of classical liberal universities have either initiated education, it is necessary to courses of study that focus on the examine the reasons for the Great Books or have renovated and Western canon’s demise in expanded older programs. Some of American universities. Over the these are one- or two-year courses past forty years, the classics have that provide an alternative way for fallen under a three-pronged freshmen and sophomores to fulfill attack. First, the postwar focus on general education distribution vocational and professional requirements, while others are minors education has taken a serious toll or honors programs. Boston on the prestige of, and demand University, for example, now offers for, classical liberal learning. an alternative track core curriculum Second, the increasing emphasis based on classic texts, and Baylor on faculty specialization and University in Waco, Texas, has a research has led professors to similar program. Other new programs avoid broad-based humanities include those at Oglethorpe courses in favor of teaching a University in Atlanta, the University seminar “on their next book.” of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and Finally, since the 1960s, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. academic critics have consistently Most of these new programs probably maligned the Great Books as would have been unthinkable fifteen Eurocentric, portraying them as years ago, when the Western canon the racist, sexist legacy of “dead was under severe attack. But in recent white males.” As an alternative years, the proliferation of minors and these critics have promoted a certificate programs in women’s multicultural agenda. They insist studies, black and Chicano studies, that students benefit most from and gay studies has created an books that are “relevant to their opportunity for those who believe experience—books whose authors that the classics have been slighted. share the students’ secondary ‘Today, when you make a focus on characteristics of race, sex, or the classics a matter of choice,” ethnicity. In response to points out one university observer, multicultural advocacy, colleges “it’s hard for administrators to argue AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 against it.” administrators who are dedicated to restoring scholarly integrity in the Organizations Supporting academy and minimizing the Liberal Education Programs influence of ideological scholarship. Several organizations have In its mission statement, the NAS played an important role in asserts that “only through an encouraging colleges and informed understanding of the universities to make a renewed Western intellectual heritage... can commitment to classical liberal citizen and scholar be equipped to education. The American sustain our civilization’s Academy for Liberal Education, achievements.” which accredits both programs The NAS might be said to have and institutions, has encouraged launched the current classical liberal the establishment of Great Books education revival with a report programs, as well as other strong entitled “The Dissolution of General liberal arts curricula, Another Education: 1914—1993.” Published significant actor has been the in 1996, this document vividly Association of Core Texts and demonstrated the need for broad- Courses (ACTC), founded in 1994 based curricular reform in the and headquartered at Temple humanities. The report surveyed the University in Philadelphia. The general education requirements at ACTC promotes the integrated

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