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“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 . The have formed the indispensable program was a three-year foundation of a liberal education in the Great Books, modeled on the in American universities. Our famous forebears viewed acquaintance program established in the 1930s and with the intellectual giants of our 1940s by Mortimer Adler and Robert civilization—, , Hutchins. We read the classics, which , Dante, Shakespeare, and philosopher 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 “ —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 ’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 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 fifty elite colleges and universities and common study of world over the course of the twentieth classics and other texts of major century. It found a precipitous decline cultural significance, usually with a in mandated survey courses and prescribed series of courses in an revealed that students increasingly interdisciplinary setting. In lack basic knowledge about their addition, the organization works to civilization’s history, philosophic expose both the shortcomings of traditions, and literary and artistic “education as training” and the legacies. As a incoherence that can result when result, the report warned, “we are in students have unlimited curricular danger of losing the common frame choice. The ACTC hosts annual of cultural reference that for many conferences, produces generations has sustained our liberal, publications, and facilitates democratic society.” networking by faculty and In 1997 the NAS began to explore institutions interested in liberal practical strategies for rebuilding education. It also offers program classical liberal education. The review consulting services. organization sponsored a conference Perhaps the organization most at Lake Tahoe that contributed to the actively engaged in the revival of establishment of a number of new classical liberal education is the programs. Five of these programs National Association of Scholars offer a minor in the Great Books or (NAS), Headquartered in in . A program at Princeton, New Jersey, the NAS is Mississippi’s Delta State University, a group of professors, graduate for example, includes four courses: students, and college the classical tradition (, ): the Judeo-Christian

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 tradition (St. Augustine, Chaucer): underwritten by a grant from the the early modern world (Hume, National Endowment for the ): and the modern Humanities, this program is an world (Freud, Darwin). Three of optional two-year sequence that the new programs offer fulfills seven general education certificates. Others involve a requirements. (Students take one yearlong survey course for Great Conversation course per freshmen, a Great Books core semester, and freshmen take an curriculum, and an online master’s interim course as well.) Beginning program for schoolteachers. with the study of the ancient Greeks In November 2000 the NAS and Hebrews, the curriculum covers followed up with a conference that the evolution of literary and artistic focused on restoring Great Books expression, philosophic thought, to the college curriculum through religious belief, and the sciences of programs designed to reach human behavior into the modern nontraditional students. world. Conference participants But young people at four-year representing a variety of institutions are not alone in their institutions included academics, newfound interest in liberal learning. legislators, and staff from Students from working-class and low- nonprofits and state humanities income backgrounds are also commissions, Following the embracing the classics with zeal. In conference, the NAS began to fact, the success of several innovative distribute its “how-to” guide for programs aimed at these groups starting new ‘Great Books suggests that nontraditional students programs, titled “Rebuilding the constitute a huge, untapped market Liberal Arts Curriculum: A for programs that promote classical Handbook for Faculty and liberal education. Administrators,” The Great Books at Wilbur Wright New Programs for Underserved College Groups College students’ enthusiastic Origin of the Great Books response to the liberal education Curriculum revival confirms that many young The premier example of a people today are hungry for successful Great Books program for educational substance. At nontraditional students is the Great Davidson College in North Books Curriculum (GBC) at Wilbur Carolina, for example, Wright College in Chicago. Wright’s approximately one-fifth of the experience illustrates how a well- freshman class participates in a planned humanities program can two-year humanities sequence revitalize intellectual life on a campus based on classic texts, At St. Olaf where low academic expectations College in Minnesota, students have been the norm. With 16,000 must compete for admission to a students, Wright is part of the City Great Books curriculum called the Colleges of Chicago, the second- Great Conversation. Originally largest community college system in

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 the nation. Its students are keep expense and red tape to a generally poorly prepared minimum, Gans endorsed using academically, and more than half existing Wright courses, but are minorities or recent transforming their lists. From immigrants. These students, of the beginning, he insisted that the course, are precisely those for program be open to all, rather than whom a multicultural curriculum is limited to honors students. often said to yield most benefit. Predictably, a number of Wright Wright English professor faculty members objected. Some Bruce Gans started the GBC in asserted that community college 1996. Gans, who teaches students were incapable of composition courses, explains that understanding the classics, while he was tired of reading student others branded the program papers on abortion and handguns. Eurocentric. Gans compromised. He As he told the Chicago Tribune: agreed that a course would qualify for When I got here, what was GBC credit if at least half of the being done was what’s being were drawn from a guide to done across the country. You classic Western texts published by the ask the kids to choose a topic Encyclopedia Britannica. This and come up with a thesis. But volume, entitled The Great the problem is we have kids Conversation: A Reader’s Guide to who are almost culturally Great Books of the Western World, illiterate. When they walk into includes titles by about130 authors. these classes, they don’t say, Initially, a committee of twelve “Let’s write about Socrates.” Wright faculty members representing Instead, they say, “Should I the English and humanities write about the Ricky Martin departments volunteered for the phenomenon?” They’ll just do program. Today, nineteen faculty what they know. members are involved, and the Gans believed that Wright departments represented include students were capable of much physical science, social science, and more. He proposed to raise the biology. From the outset, student academic bar at Wright by interest in the GBC was high and the establishing a certificate program program grew quickly. The program in the Great Books. A student who now has about 900 students, and took at least four courses—twelve some classes are oversubscribed. credits—in the program would get Why were so many students a special certificate on his or her drawn to the GBC, whose courses are transcript, serving as a mark of so much more demanding than most distinction for those who later others at Wright? Gans let Wright applied to four-year institutions. students in on a secret that few had Gans envisioned the GBC as an heard. He told them that education is integrated introduction to the about much more than getting a job: humanities. He anticipated that it is about becoming a thinking each semester, GBC courses person. Gans produced a would share a common theme, promotional brochure that depicts the such as the pursuit of happiness or world’s most profound books as questions of good and evil. To accessible to Wright students. Indeed,

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 the brochure suggests that makes no sense.” By the time they acquaintance with Great Books is reached the last book, however, the Wright students’ birthright: students were conducting the discussion themselves, eagerly The GBC will have you reading disputing about matters of politics, and thinking about the same justice, and good and evil, Had Swift books that people like written the fourth book in a more Shakespeare and Einstein did accessible style? Gans asked. Yes, the when they were in your students replied. With emotion, Gans position. You will be shaped by responded, “It’s not Swift who’s these books just as they were. changed: it’s you. And you will be amazed at how your life will be expanded and Benefits of the Great Books enriched because you have Curriculum entered into “conversations” The Great Books Curriculum has with GB authors. brought myriad benefits to Wright students. First and foremost, it has Of course, most GBC students changed the way that students view don’t begin Wright’s program with themselves. Reading , Ibsen, a ready appreciation for the and Dostoevsky they begin to classics. Moans and groans are believe—for the first time—that they frequent. New students are often are capable of serious thought. GBC oppressed by the workload and students report that, in subsequent overwhelmed by the complexity of courses at Wright, their GBC the books’ unfamiliar or arcane background gives them a tremendous . But GBC teachers work advantage over their peers. Likewise, with students patiently, often students who transfer to four-year explicating texts line by line. They institutions indicate that their GBC introduce students to hitherto courses prepared them well for the foreign concepts, like allegory and more demanding and difficult irony, and demonstrate the workload they find elsewhere. Not importance of supporting one’s surprisingly, GBC students graduate interpretations with references to at a substantially higher rate than the text. other Wright students, In fact, in each Slowly, as GBC students grow of the last two years, the graduation in knowledge and confidence, they rate of GBC students has doubled. come to see that they are capable Today, GBC ‘certificate of grappling with our civilization’s completers”—who make up less than greatest works of and 6 percent of Wright’s student body— philosophy. Gans gives the constitute approximately 30 percent following example. Recently, he of the students who graduate. taught a course on Jonathan According to Gans, another Swift’s masterpiece. Gulliver’s academic benefit of the GBC is the Travels. The work, a political dramatic progress that GBC students allegory, is divided into four make in skills. “There is not a books. As Gans’s students read semester that goes by,” he says, the first book, they grumbled, “where I do not pause... because I am “Why are we reading this? It

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 overtaken by a quiet joy over how For Gans, the most memorable knowledgeably my students have outcome of the Great Books come to handle , Curriculum has been the advent of a Schopenhauer, , and diverse and cohesive intellectual Swift.” It’s not that most papers community at Wright: are novel or profound, Gans adds. “The crucial point is that every Perhaps it is true that you can student has mastered some share some of your deepest rudiments of some basic element insights into life and your most of history and high culture and has moving esthetic experiences only adequately contemplated some with people who are immersed in problem of lasting importance.” the same materials at the same Finally, the GBC helps students time. If that is true then I and my understand that their common students—a group that is usually humanity transcends the secondary minimally educated, almost characteristics of sex, ethnicity, culturally illiterate, in many cases and sexual preference that seem to from dysfunctional households, a divide them. The program creates group in many ways as different a community of shared inquiry in from each other as they are from which individual merit is all that me—through the Great Books, matters. Students find this have shared things we cannot captivating, and many begin share with anyone else. outspokenly to reject the usual The GBC's Campus wide “multicultural” pigeonholes. Influence Journalists who have written At Wilbur Wright, the GBC’s about the GBC have often been influence has spread far beyond the struck by students’ rejection of program’s classrooms and invigorated multicultural ideology. One young intellectual life across the entire man responded this way to a campus. Gans and his colleagues have reporter’s query about the GBC’s worked hard to create both lack of “authors of color”: “To me opportunities and incentives for as a black man, you have to get extracurricular learning. For example, past your color and just appreciate Wright boasts what is apparently the what’s being written. Professor nation’s only student-written scholarly Gans chooses really good titles.” A journal, called Symposium, which Hispanic student told a reporter, publishes articles on Great "If I wanted to learn more about Books—related topics. Students vie black writers, Hispanic writers, for the honor of seeing their work in minority writers, I’d take a course Symposium’s pages, and they in Aztec culture or Mexican contribute with titles like culture. I’m here to make myself a “Cervantes on the Nature of more intellectual person, Individuality” and “Cicero’s Critique regardless of my race, regardless of of God.” my background.” A third student After the Wall Street Journal put it this way: “I believe we published a short piece about the should not look at the race [of creation of Symposium, Gans books’ authors, but rather the received subscription orders from ideas behind them.”

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 institutions across the country. The site has links to Internet More and more Wright research sites, and to museums, students are becoming involved, libraries, and classical radio and staying involved, with the stations. Students can download Great Books. The college has a assigned readings that are in the Great Books discussion group that public domain, like ’s boasts approximately a hundred The Persians and members. In addition, Wright stories. Without this opportunity, sponsors two college wide Wright faculty would be limited in colloquia every year on Great the primary texts they could Books themes. Faculty lead the fall assign, since most GBC students colloquium, and students the have very slim budgets for buying spring session. GBC students books. sometimes have an opportunity to Gans is now “going national” share their perspectives with the with the GBC’s formula for larger community. After success. He is launching a new September 11, for example, Milton organization, the National Great Rosenberg—host of WGN Books Institute, whose honorary Radio’s “Extension 720” talk chair will be Chicago’s Mayor show—invited a panel of GBC Richard Daley. The institute will faculty members and students to offer consulting services, and will discuss the classics and their provide sample course syllabi and relevance to the attack on the reading lists to interested faculty World Trade Center. members and institutions across Gans is particularly proud of the partnership he has forged the country. It will also help between Wright and the colleges with faculty recruitment prestigious Chicago Humanities and development, operate a Web Festival, which hosts site, and coordinate conferences prominent speakers and and programs for faculty members scholars, and draws an who wish to exchange information audience of thousands. In with like-minded colleagues. Great 2003, Gans hopes to hold at Books Programs at Other least one festival event on the Community Colleges Wright campus. He is planning Gans’s work with the GBC is to involve Wright students already beginning to inspire similar directly in festival activities. programs at other institutions. For Gans is tireless in his efforts example, a Great Books program is in to support and reward GBC the works at El Centro, a satellite students’ academic efforts. He campus of Chicago’s Northeastern has raised the money to provide Illinois University. El Centro was a number of modest established in 1968 to meet the scholarships for students whose educational needs of the Latin work is good enough to be American population of Chicago’s nominated for Symposium. He north side. The majority of its has also established a Web site students are Hispanic, and the to facilitate student research. campus is located in a Puerto Rican neighborhood. El Centro offers night

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 classes for students who work Poverty during the day and provides them The Bard Clemente Course with an opportunity to prepare for About the time that Bruce Gans eventual transfer to Northeastern’s was launching the GBC at Wright, an four-year campus. Sociology even more unusual Great Books professor Caleb Rosado is the project was in the works. In 1995, force behind El Centro’s new Earl Shorris, a University of Chicago Great Books program. alumnus and Harper’s magazine Norwalk Community College in editor, conceived the idea of a Norwalk, Connecticut, is also seminar course in the humanities for launching a Great Books people trapped in poverty. curriculum. Professor William Shorris came up with the idea O’Connell, chair of Norwalk’s while he was doing research for his English department, conceived of book New American Blues: A the program after reading a New Journey through Poverty to York Times article about Wilbur Democracy. Through conversations Wright’s GBC, Norwalk’s Great with low-income people, he became Books program will serve as an convinced that the poor often alternative to the school’s current succumb to a “surround of force”—a interdisciplinary core requirement. constant press of demands that Great Books classes will be require immediate reaction and seem structured as small seminars that to preclude rational reflection. Shorris employ the Socratic method and concluded that government focus on four or five texts every antipoverty programs are unlikely to semester. be effective, since they do not change In order to foster a truly poverty’s fundamental dynamic. He interdisciplinary flavor, all of reasoned that if the poor are to Norwalk’s Great escape poverty, they must develop the Books courses will integrate two habits of reflection and responsible disciplines. Courses will cover four behavior that citizenship requires. In general subject areas: short, the poor must become mathematics/science, “autonomous,” that is, capable of history/politics, reasoned moral action and self- religion/philosophy, and control. In Shorris’s own experience, literature/arts. To receive a Great the most effective way to encourage Books honors degree, students will reflection (and thus the capacity to be required to take at least four participate in political life) is through Great Books courses in addition to study of the humanities. an introductory Great Books Shorris mentioned his idea to Dr. course called “The Socratic Jaime Inclan, founder of the Roberto Method.” This introductory course Clemente Family Guidance Center in will not be limited to honors New York City. Shorris told Inclan students, but will be open to all that he aspired to establish a free students who wish to encounter twenty-eight-week humanities Great Books texts and methodologies. seminar for people in poverty. The course would consist of readings in Great Books for People in

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 philosophy, poetry, American absolutely But not in terms of money. history, logic, rhetoric, and art In terms of life.”Shorris’s plan was to history. Intrigued, Inclan quickly have students read the classics and offered the Clemente Center as a discuss them by means of the Socratic class site, and Shorris prevailed on method. He viewed this format as various qualified friends—an vital. As a “midwife of ideas,” Shorris eminent novelist, an art critic, a noted, Socrates had prompted his historian—to donate their time as listeners to reflect on the nature of teachers. With the help of social concepts like justice, piety, courage, service agencies, he recruited and friendship. Later, the insights thirty-one students. Most of them they had acquired in these were minorities, some were on helped them to make wise decisions welfare, others had been in prison, in their own lives. Shorris was and many had not completed high convinced that Clemente students school. would respond to one of Socrates’ Shorris required Clemente fundamental messages: that the truth students to be between eighteen was already inside them, merely and thirty-five, with a household waiting to be brought out by . income less than 150 percent of He believed that Socrates’ approach the federal poverty level. At the to enhancing reflective citizenship, time, the poverty level was $16,000 which had been so effective in ancient for a single person and $32,000 for Athens, would also be effective in a family of four, (Subsequently, modern-day New York City. Shorris dropped the income The Clemente course began with requirement. “People know when the study of ethics. Students read the they are poor,” he now says.) Allegory of the Cave from Plato’s Potential students also had to Republic and quickly realized that the demonstrate their ability to read a cave could serve as a metaphor for tabloid newspaper. (Later, the their poverty. Next, they read entrance selections from other Platonic requirement changed to reading a dialogues and ’s page of Plato.) Finally, students Nichomachean Ethics, along with had to express an intent to finish ’ Antigone and Pericles’ the course. Those who were Funeral Oration from Thucydides’ accepted into the program The Peloponnesian War. They also received child care, books, a snack studied poetry, beginning with short or dinner, and transportation poems in the form of jokes or puns, costs. and moving on to Blake and D. H. Shorris describes the ups and Lawrence. Seminar participants downs of the first Clemente probed the founding principles of course in his 2000 book, Riches American history. In addition, they for the Poor: The Clemente studied Egyptian and Greek art, and Course in the Humanities. He toured the Metropolitan Museum of began the first session by asking Art. Throughout the course, Shorris students, “Will the humanities strove to maintain an atmosphere of make you rich?” The answer, dignity and reinforced it by requiring Shorris explained, was: “Yes, professors and students to address

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 one another as Mr. and Miss. He College in Annandale-on-Hudson, also insisted on academic rigor. New York—had watched Shorris’s Students were required to write project with great interest. Once several papers and to take a the rigor of the course became challenging final exam on each of clear, the executive committee of the five sections of the course. Bard’s faculty agreed to award six Fourteen of the first Clemente hours of Bard college credit to students eventually dropped out. Clemente graduates who wrote a (“Along the way,” writes Shorris, satisfactory final paper and passed “one died of AIDS, three became the final exam. Fourteen of the pregnant, two seriously ill.”) But first graduates earned six credits the effect on the seventeen from Bard. Of those students, students who finished was just eleven enrolled in a four-year what Shorris had hoped. He college, with five choosing to illustrates with this story. One attend Bard. Six months after Saturday afternoon halfway graduation, only one graduate was through the course, a twenty-six- not enrolled in an accredited year-old student phoned Shorris, college, working full time, or both. There had been trouble at his job, After the Clemente course’s he reported, He had become so second year, organizations around angry that he had wanted to the country—both educational “smack his supervisor up against institutions and social service the wall.” “I tried to talk to some agencies—began to show interest friends to calm myself down,” he in the Clemente concept. Linda explained, “but nobody was Capell, then director of the around.” Shorris feared that the Federation of State Humanities man was calling from jail. “What Commissions, was especially did you do?” he queried anxiously. instrumental in generating interest “Mr. Shorris,” replied the student, and support. When proposals for “I asked myself, ‘What would other courses began to crop up Socrates do?’” For Shorris, this around the country, Shorris hired was the first example of the philosopher Martin Kempner as Clemente course’s power to the Clemente course’s national change the way that students think director. Today, Kempner helps to and act, Subsequently, Shorris saw coordinate nineteen courses in many such examples. For most of twelve states, pushing their the original Clemente students, he academic level up and their wrote, “the humanities became a attrition rates down. Some of these mirror in which they saw their sites now sponsor “bridge” human worth, and like all lovers, courses, which keep students they were transformed by love.” engaged between the end of their Clemente studies and their The Clemente Course Today enrollment in college. From the first days of the The results of the Clemente Clemente course, Leon course’s first five years have been Botstein—president of Bard impressive. Nationally, 56 percent of students who have enrolled have

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 completed the course. Of them, 71 concept. Alaska’s Yup’ik Eskimos percent have either moved on to were the first indigenous people to college or reported plans to do so request a Clemente program. (The in the near future. On December Yup’ik also started the nation’s first 20, 2000, President Clinton and only Clemente course for K-12 awarded Earl Shorris a National teachers.) In Oklahoma—home to Humanities Medal, saying: ‘Using the Clemente inspired Pan American the humanities to inspire Indian Humanities Center—there are intellectual freedom and political special courses for three tribes: the power, [Shorris] moves people to Kiowas, Cherokees, and Chickasaws. think critically, act ethically, and In 2003 the Comanche tribe will also live freely.” have its own course. Generally, In the last few years, the courses for indigenous people are Clemente course has expanded bicultural, though a few are entirely beyond the Bard program and has indigenous in content. Bicultural taken new and varied forms. courses devote half of class time to Today, there are about thirteen Western humanities classics and half Clemente-type courses in which to the tribe’s own humanities students do not receive Bard tradition, Many courses incorporate credit. In 2000, for example, the tribal elders, who convey the tribe’s federal government’s Fund for the oral tradition of stories, art, and Improvement of Post-Secondary philosophy, and lead related Education (FIPSE) awarded Bard discussions. Elders’ words are taped, a grant to establish Clemente-style so that the tribe can build a library of courses under the sponsorship of these presentations. five other colleges: Northeastern To date, there are four College in Massachusetts, Reed international Clemente courses, three College in Oregon, Trinity College of which serve indigenous people. in Connecticut, Bloorafield One course, in Milpa Alta, Mexico, is College in New Jersey, and the conducted in the Nahuat language. A University of Wisconsin in course in the Yucatan is conducted in Milwaukee. These institutions will the Mayan language. The Yucatan award their own college credits to Clemente faculty plans to build a students who pass their course. small college to train teachers to Today, Clemente or Clemente conduct humanities classes in outlying inspired courses serve an villages. Canada also hosts two extraordinarily broad array of Clemente courses: one that is students. Some programs are conducted on the Musqueam conducted in prisons. Another is Reservation near Vancouver and run by a Florida senior center, another, sponsored by the University which caters to elderly black of British Columbia that serves low- women who are either illiterate or income people in Vancouver. blind. Since the women can’t read, the teacher reads the books aloud A Clemente Course for the and participants discuss them. Homeless Indian tribes have shown a One of the most unusual special interest in the Clemente

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 Clemente type courses serves reluctance. Then Power and Fallon people from a homeless shelter in invite them to sign up for the South Bend, Indiana. The seminar, noting that the only University of Notre Dame requirement is that students do the sponsors the program, which is assigned reading every week and called the Community Extension come to class prepared to discuss it. World Masterpieces Seminar. The Power and Fallon say that they seminar is the brainchild of have learned a good deal from Professors Clark Power and Steve teaching classic works to students Fallon, both of whom teach in who are intimately acquainted with Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal life’s underside. (“It may sound Studies (PLS). Power and Fallon odd, but I feel grateful to have the operate the program with the chance to look at these texts assistance of South Bend’s Center through their eyes,” says Power, a for the Homeless, an innovative developmental psychologist.) residential facility that assists Seminar participants often read homeless individuals to achieve their assignments carefully and employment and stability. The come to class with many center has about a hundred underlined passages. Frequently, residents. their own lives reflect elements of The Community Extension tragedy: abuse, addiction, seminar consists of three eight- economic disaster. Because of this, week courses, each of which the professors say, the students involves one ninety-minute class tend to develop a deeply personal per week, Students who complete relationship with the texts. reading assignments and write a According to Power, “Books paper receive one unit of Notre become a means for them to Dame college credit for each interpret their own past lives and session they finish. help them look to the future.” Power and Fallon have devised For seminar student Michael a novel and highly successful Newton, a former drug addict, approach for recruiting Plato’s works are particularly Community Extension students. meaningful. “Those of us in the Before every eight-week session, grip of addiction use this process the two professors address the to rethink our lives.” he center’s weekly meeting. which all says.“Socrates makes clear that residents attend. The professors you have to have the courage to show a film of a scene from examine yourself and to stand up Sophocles’ Antigone. They stop for something. A lot of us have the action at a highly dramatic justified our weaknesses for too point and ask a probing question, long a time,” Carmen Ware, like “Should Antigone defy the another former addict, finds the ruler Creon and bury her brother?” story of Job especially moving: “I This question invariably sparks a remember sleeping on a sidewalk, lively debate. Residents discuss the with the lining of a trash can cover issue for fifteen or twenty minutes, me and rain coming down. But I and generally stop with great ain’t been through nothing

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 compared to what Job has gone halfway residence for women in through. It inspires you to various recovery or job assistance come home.” programs. PLS students have been Denis Kazmierczak, a former eager to help, providing child care actor, discovered through and assisting in other ways. (This Community Extension seminar program was recently placed on hold texts that he has much in common with the departure of the faculty with middle-class Americans. “It is member who initiated it.) At hard to find beauty when you are Hamilton High, South Bend’s in the situation we are in,” he alternative high school, PLS students notes. “But I have come to realize now conduct a Junior Great Books through the reading that, in some program and oversee similar ways, everybody is homeless. You programs in a number of South Bend can be sitting in your fancy public and parochial schools. penthouse apartment looking out Generally, students design a unique at the world but your life can be curriculum for each school, based on hollow. Now my mind is active, I the skill level and interests of students have picked up a lost thread.” there. In addition to introducing students to the Great Books, the The Liberating Power of Community Extension seminar Great Books exposes them to music and The success of Wright College’s theater. Notre Dame has donated Great Books Curriculum and of tickets for seminar participants to the Clemente course in its various hear Handel’s Messiah, while St. manifestations makes clear that Mary’s College has underwritten study of the classics can have a their attendance at Shakespeare’s strong appeal for individuals on The Comedy of Errors. Actors the lower rungs of the social from a visiting British troupe have ladder. Most commentators have met with students to talk about found this surprising, and Shakespeare and conduct acting newspapers like the New York exercises in which students Times and the Chicago Tribune participate. Notre Dame have treated the matter as front professors from several page news. In fact, however, the departments have also addressed liberating power of the Great seminar participants, sharing their Books is an old story Wright and scholarly expertise and love of Clemente students are merely the learning. To date, about thirty latest in a long line of individuals colleges and universities have whose lives have been expressed interest in duplicating transformed by the classics, and the Program of Liberal Studies’ who have transformed their Community Extension seminar. societies as a result. South Bend already has several spin-offs. In January 2001 PLS The Great Books in Black America began offering a seminar at the Earl Shorris has written eloquently YWCA, which serves as a shelter about how the humanities have for abused women and houses a

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 helped to integrate black thoughts of my own soul, which had Americans into their nation’s frequently flashed through my mind, political life. The process, he and died away for want of notes, began over 150 years ago: utterance..... What I got from Even before manumission, the Sheridan was a bold denunciation of study of the humanities went slavery, and a powerful vindication of on in slave quarters. There was human rights. The reading of these one text, but there were many documents enabled me to utter my different courses, ontology, thoughts, and to meet the arguments ethics, literature, rhetoric, and brought forward to sustain slavery. epistemology among them. The text, of course, was the King Douglass’s pursuit of liberal James Version of the Bible. . . . education lasted throughout his With nothing more . . . the life. His acquaintance with great descendants of slaves literature underlay the power and reinvented themselves through eloquence of his own the humanities, preparing extraordinary oratory on behalf of themselves for the political life. the antislavery cause. According to one observer, when Douglass Frederick Douglass, the great spoke about slavery, “Flinty hearts orator and advocate of racial were pierced and cold ones melted equality, was one slave whose life by his eloquence.” was transformed by the W E. B. Du Bois was another humanities. Douglass’s white great African American who saw mistress taught him to read when liberal education as central to the he was eight, though to teach a crusade for black freedom. In his slave to read was a crime, As a 1903 book The Souls of Black result, Douglass wrote later, he Folk, Du Bois wrote that grasped even as a child that education was the key to elevating “education and slavery were the black race and dispelling the incompatible with each other.” unreasoning prejudice of whites. Douglass loathed slavery, but Du Bois insisted that, if black was uncertain of the justice of Americans were to rise above their slaves’ demand for freedom. At condition, they must have access twelve, he obtained a copy of The to an education “that encourages Columbian Orator, a aspiration, that sets the loftiest of compendium of great historical ideals and seeks as an end culture speeches. The book included one and character rather than bread- of playwright Richard Brinsley winning.” Du Bois looked to Sheridan’s powerful speeches to newly established Negro colleges, Parliament on behalf of Catholic like Atlanta University and Fisk emancipation in the British Isles. University, to provide the sort of The words of this speech education that he saw as crucial to electrified the young Douglass, the cause of black freedom. “The beginning his intellectual foundations of knowledge in this liberation, Later, Douglass wrote race,” he wrote, “must be sunk that Sheridan’s mighty speech, and deep in the college and university.’ other great works of literature, When it came to problems of gave tongue to interesting black social advance, Du Bois

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 asked, “Can there be any to think for themselves. The upper possible solution other than by classes maintained a closely guarded study and thought and an monopoly on the knowledge required appeal to the rich experience of to interpret law, politics, and religion the past?” He answered his for the lower orders. own question in ringing words, But as grew, many working among the most eloquent he people began to yearn for intellectual ever wrote: independence. To guide their quest, they chose the very books that the I sit with Shakespeare and he elite had appropriated as their own: winces not. Across the color Homer, , Plutarch, Bacon. line I move arm in arm with As a result, in the 1800's English Balzac and Dumas. where weavers often read Shakespeare as smiling men and welcoming they worked at their looms. women glide in gilded halls. According to Rose, shepherds From out the caves of evening “maintained a kind of circulating that swing between the strong- library, leaving books they had read in limbed earth and the tracery of designated crannies in boundary the stars, I summon Aristotle walls.” In mines and factory towns, and Aurelius and what soul I informal discussion groups sprang up. will, and they come all Many aspiring readers paid a serious graciously with no scorn nor price for their uppity ways. Francis condescension. So, wed with Place, a tailor, lost most of his upper- Truth, I dwell above the Veil Is class customers when they dis- this the life you grudge us, 0 covered, with horror, that he owned a knightly America? library of more than a thousand volumes. The Great Books in England What did England’s common peo- ple find in the classics? Like Wright and Clemente students, they found In England, the intellectual prede- the tools they needed to begin to cessors of Wright and Clemente answer what Kant identified as the students were the miners, weavers, four great questions of human life: and milkmaids of the eighteenth What can I know? What should I do? and nineteenth centuries. These What may I hope for? What is man? ordinary folk achieved personal Less-than- can’t and political liberation by reading perform this function. Ordinary the classics, Historian Jonathan works of fiction, for example, tend to Rose tells their story in a fas- follow stereotyped formulas that limit cinating 2001 book, their value. But the classics, in Rose’s words, “offer a hundred ways of The Intellectual Life of the understanding the world, and a British Working Class. hundred plans for changing it.” Over According to Rose, in the 1500s, time, British workers who read Milton English law barred common and Locke began to grasp that they people from reading even the deserved educational and political Bible. England’s rigid class system equality. Eventually, they was grounded in the conviction demanded—and got—both. that commoners were incompetent

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 Problems of Great Books and political theory. In addition, she Programs has secured grants that enable some The success of Wright’s Great of her students to work as visiting Books Curriculum and the professors in undergraduate Great Clemente course suggests that our Books programs at other institutions. nation needs many similar These institutions benefit by programs, designed to serve obtaining part-time, broadly educated students from a wide range of faculty members whose salaries are backgrounds. But new Great subsidized, while the Fordham Books programs are likely to students gain invaluable Great Books teaching experience and also have an encounter a serious problem. opportunity to finish their Generally, it is difficult to find dissertations. Currently. Nichols is college faculty members who are working to establish a new Ph.D. willing to participate. In part, this program that will train scholars who is because most colleges do not wish to specialize exclusively in Great encourage or reward the teaching Books education. of broad-based humanities courses. In addition, faculty The Stakes members are frequently so After decades of decline, classical specialized that they do not feel liberal education is beginning to competent to conduct seminars revive in America. Why should that focus on “the big questions.” Americans care about the success of For some years, the Institute of this revival? As Earl Shorris notes, Philosophic Studies at the has worked to history demonstrates that liberal change this. The institute sponsors learning is vital to democracy. The a Great Books disciplinary Ph.D. real question, he writes,” is whether program, in which students or not a democracy... can exist in full concentrate on a broad array of without the humanities. How long a classic texts but receive a Ph.D. in society that forsakes the ethical and a particular discipline: literature, intellectual strength of reflective politics, or philosophy In recent thinking can continue to prosper is years, institute graduates have open to question. Whether such a helped to found two new Great nation can maintain a position of Books colleges, the College of St. leadership is doubtful.” in Texas and And what of the oft-heard charge Thomas More College of Liberal that the Great Books hold little inter- Arts in New Hampshire. est for women and minorities because Mary Nichols, a political the authors are largely white and science professor at Fordham male? Again, Shorris, a self-described University, is also making an effort man of the left, has a fitting response: to increase the number of faculty members who are prepared to The humanities will always be teach Great Books courses. heavily influenced by the work of Nichols has been instrumental in the dead white men of Europe, for creating Fordham’s unique they have been history’s political science Ph.D. program, troublemakers, the fomenters of which incorporates both literature revolutions and inventions, the

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002 impetus of change, the education more than ever. In its implacable enemies of the mission statement, the Association silence in which humanity of Core Texts and Courses points perishes. No other great body out that the classics can help of work invites criticism or students develop the ability to denies loneliness to the same exercise critical judgment in order extent, and no other body of to free themselves from “instant work in all the history of the truths and local passions.” At the world led to politics, with its same time, these books lead their still astonishing notion of readers to ponder universal autonomy. The graduates of questions, both timeless in their Wright’s Great Books philosophical significance and Curriculum and the Clemente timely in their relevance to us. course have learned for Perhaps the words carved over the themselves that a classical entrance of the University of liberal education can open the Wisconsin library in Madison minds of all. Indeed, in an express it best: “We are all increasingly globalized world, mentioned in the wills of Homer we need classical liberal and Shakespeare.”

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT QUARTERLY SUMMER 2002