Robert Maynard Hutchins was the brilliant educator behind the development of the Great Books. He became president of the University of Chicago at the age of 30. He was deeply concerned about the professionalization of college education, that is, the push to use a college education merely for career preparation and work specialization.

He spent years working to reform the program at the University of Chicago. He wanted to insure that students were sufficiently educated in the liberal arts to function as truly free men and women.  But he faced recalcitrant faculty and donors. After 16 years, his program ended when he left the university, but aspects of it have remained incorporated in the curriculum ever since.

Some say that the overarching approach he instituted, based on the Classics with an interdisciplinary approach to study, is one of the keys to the University of Chicago’s large number of remarkable discoveries and wide intellectual influence.  As he said “...knowledge is not fragmented but unified, since reality itself, which it reflects, is a whole.”

Given what I have seen accomplished in Montessori schools at the elementary and high school levels, I don’t see a contradiction between preparing someone for a life of inquiry, as a free, well-functioning individual, and preparing them for a profession. The best type of education does both, by developing the capabilities to handle all the functions of life. It is all a matter of how one is educated.

We have carefully crafted the program of the College of the United States to deeply nurture the ability to learn and think, with rationality and independence.

In this blog, and in articles on educational philosophy and method which I will post to the website, I propose to flesh out for you, dear reader, what our program is about.

Welcome to our blog—I look forward to your comments. I leave you with a few more quotes from Hutchins about the Great Books, quite relevant to the issues of our times:

 “The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the Logos. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the potentialities of the race. These books are the means of understanding our society and ourselves.

“They contain the great ideas that dominate us without our knowing it. There is no comparable repository of our tradition. To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations.  On the other hand, the revival of interest in these books from time to time throughout history has provided the West with new drive and creativeness. Great Books have salvaged, preserved, and transmitted the tradition on many occasions similar to our own.” Robert Maynard Hutchins, “The Great Conversation.”