Reading the Great Books
Seventeen years ago I met a woman online who suggested we study The Great Books set, using the learning plan found in the books. She proposed that our group read one excerpt every week, post our thoughts about the reading online, and then go on to the next. It would require five years to go through the excerpts. Completion of each reading was not the goal. Any percent read was better than nothing, and any comments made were valued.
I was pregnant with my seventh child and knew I would be nursing a baby for at least a year. I would have lots of time to sit and read. So I committed to read and comment as best I could. The thought of reading on someone else’s schedule sounded like a chore, but it would be no more a chore than taking a college class, which I had done. If I had to skip some readings, I could.
The actual books listed in the Great Books are a who’s who of ancient and medieval Western authors. I had a pretty good public school education; almost none of the Great Books were in it. I only owned a couple of the volumes: Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost. I survived to adulthood without whatever was in these books. But I had been teaching my children at least tangentially according to Thomas Jefferson Education principles, as outlined by Oliver and Rachel DeMille. They stressed going to source materials and inspiring my children to better education by educating myself. So I bit the bullet and started.
Four years later the original woman and two or three other people remained in our group. I enjoyed the reading much more than I expected. The real treasure, though, was commenting on each other’s thoughts about the readings. We learned more about each other. We became friends. And we all learned from the experience. She stopped the group around the start of the fifth year. She had got what she wanted out of it, and needed to switch activities. I wanted to continue, but without the group, my reading quickly drifted to other things.
I still have in my emails many of the comments I wrote to the group. I learned a lot and I wrote a lot. It was during that group that I read all the way through War and Peace. I now know who Rabelais was and can pick up on references to Pantagruel and Spinoza. My life is richer for the experience.
