Although Great Books programs don’t enjoy the culture buzz they did in the 1940s and 50s, they are still going strong. The Great Books approach proves its pedagogical worth every day in the thriving communities of St. John’s College and in many other secondary schools, colleges  and adult education programs. If you want to take time out from your busy life to immerse yourself in the Great Books, you can find a way to do so.

Proponents of the Great Books approach have an aversion to sociology and they aren’t too strong at history either so they generally resist efforts to ground their own movement in broader historical trends. But it isn’t difficult to locate the movement.  The specific issue that founders of the Great Books approach were addressing was the professionalization and specialization of knowledge in the American research university that was well-advanced by the dawn of the 20th century.  In the view of the founders, compartmentalization of knowledge inhibited the possibility of engaged public discourse and so threatened participation in a democratic society.

(For a recent conventional reiteration of this trope see Liz Coleman’s TED talk.)

When you read the pronouncements from the founders of the Great Books movement is seems clear that there was also a broader target, which was the subordination of intellectual life to industrial processes. Great Books champions constantly referred to educating students for freedom. Implicit is a critique of the extent to which intellectual life in mainstream advanced societies grew in the 20th century to be a tool for the production of value.

When asked to describe their reasons for selecting a Great Books program rather than a more typical college education, students say they chose it because they didn’t want their life to feel like an assembly line. They didn’t want to feel like their education was simply jumping through one hoop after another. They wanted a chance to step off their assigned path and have a chance for genuinely free and reflective thought.

Today there is a whole new intellectual movement movement having nothing to do with the Great Books that talks a great deal about freedom. Look at the titles of these recent manifestoes:

Lawrence Lessig. FREE CULTURE: HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE AND CONTROL CREATIVITY

Yochai Benkler, THE WEALTH OF NETWORKS: HOW SOCIAL PRODUCTION TRANSFORMS MARKETS AND FREEDOM

This is an entirely different kind of freedom than that discussed by champions of the Great Books. Lessig and Benkler are talking about freedom that arises with the breakdown of the industrial production model of intellectual culture. With the world-wide diffusion of personal computers connected via the Internet, centralized control of the production of information is undermined. Today billions of people across the globe have the ability to engage socially, intellectually and politically without mediating authorities. According to Lessig, Benkler and many others, the 20th century industrial production model of intellectual life is dying, replaced by a less centralized, more participatory form.

Does an education that was founded to address one kind of restraint remain relevant in this new era with its potentially huge expansion in intellectual freedom? I do not know the answer. But one thing I know for sure: It is not sufficient for proponents of the Great Book program to pretend nothing has changed and claim to be as relevant as they ever were. The ground is shifting at a remarkable pace. Do we really need the Great Books Program today or do we need a new education that more fully takes into account the profound changes in our intellectual culture? I would love the hear this question seriously addressed by proponents of the Great Books program.