L Gordon Crovitz: Lessons From the Great Books Generation
Those who wonder about digital media shortening our attention spans usually fret about businesspeople glued to BlackBerrys or students multitasking through homework. For another measure of how our society has changed, consider this new-product launch from April 15, 1952:
The scene is glitzier than Steve Jobs releasing the latest iProduct: a black-tie gala in the Jade Room of New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, attended by Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and a representative of the queen of England. What's being launched? A 54-volume set of books, with 443 works by 74 authors totaling 32,000 pages of small type.
These were not just any books, but "Great Books of the Western World," marketed by Encyclopaedia Britannica. The authors included Aristotle, Aquinas, Milton, Locke, Hume and Mill along with some especially dense texts such as Apollonius' "On Conic Sections." The celebrities who bought the special Founders' Edition at $500 per leather-bound set included David Ben-Gurion, Frank Capra, Marshall Field, Conrad Hilton, Henry Luce and Walter Lippmann.
The Great Books were marketed door-to-door through the 1960s with the message that anyone could become well-read. "The ability to discuss and clarify basic ideas is vital to access. Doors open to the man who possesses this talent," read one advertisement. Another said, "Great Books alone can't make you a vice-president. Or chairman of the board. But they can stimulate your mind, and sharpen your judgment."
People accepted the now-heretical idea that self-appointed guardians of the culture could identify the authors (all dead, white and male) who counted. By the 1980s, university students objected to the very idea of the Western canon, chanting "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!" Today, young people barely accept the idea that newspaper editors can judge the importance of what happened yesterday.
In his recently published book, "A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books," author Alex Beam looks back in wonder at how one million copies of this set could have been sold and why 50,000 Americans a year enrolled in Great Books discussion groups. It's easy to be condescending about the idea of offering a selection of hard texts to a mass audience, but today's more fleeting culture has something to learn.
The project was the brainchild of two academics, Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins. As president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins had created a college curriculum based on a common core of books and ideas. The "Great Books" volumes focused on the most elite authors, but its inspiration was pure populism. "The best education for the best is the best education for all," Hutchins said. "I am not saying that reading and discussing the Great Books will save humanity from itself, but I don't know anything else that will."...
Read entire article at WSJ
The scene is glitzier than Steve Jobs releasing the latest iProduct: a black-tie gala in the Jade Room of New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, attended by Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and a representative of the queen of England. What's being launched? A 54-volume set of books, with 443 works by 74 authors totaling 32,000 pages of small type.
These were not just any books, but "Great Books of the Western World," marketed by Encyclopaedia Britannica. The authors included Aristotle, Aquinas, Milton, Locke, Hume and Mill along with some especially dense texts such as Apollonius' "On Conic Sections." The celebrities who bought the special Founders' Edition at $500 per leather-bound set included David Ben-Gurion, Frank Capra, Marshall Field, Conrad Hilton, Henry Luce and Walter Lippmann.
The Great Books were marketed door-to-door through the 1960s with the message that anyone could become well-read. "The ability to discuss and clarify basic ideas is vital to access. Doors open to the man who possesses this talent," read one advertisement. Another said, "Great Books alone can't make you a vice-president. Or chairman of the board. But they can stimulate your mind, and sharpen your judgment."
People accepted the now-heretical idea that self-appointed guardians of the culture could identify the authors (all dead, white and male) who counted. By the 1980s, university students objected to the very idea of the Western canon, chanting "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!" Today, young people barely accept the idea that newspaper editors can judge the importance of what happened yesterday.
In his recently published book, "A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books," author Alex Beam looks back in wonder at how one million copies of this set could have been sold and why 50,000 Americans a year enrolled in Great Books discussion groups. It's easy to be condescending about the idea of offering a selection of hard texts to a mass audience, but today's more fleeting culture has something to learn.
The project was the brainchild of two academics, Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins. As president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins had created a college curriculum based on a common core of books and ideas. The "Great Books" volumes focused on the most elite authors, but its inspiration was pure populism. "The best education for the best is the best education for all," Hutchins said. "I am not saying that reading and discussing the Great Books will save humanity from itself, but I don't know anything else that will."...