Philosophizing is not exactly a fun way to spend one’s summer. But that does not seem to be the case with the young students, ages 12 to 17, who are enrolled in the Great Books Summer Program. An annual program offered at either Stanford University or Amherst College, it is designed to make these “precocious thinkers” understand the works of great thinkers such as, Plato and Aristotle, St. Thomas, James Madison and Friedrich Hayek through lectures and discussions in a communal setting. Academic Director Peter Temes said in this WSJ article, A Summer with Aristotle, that the program is experiencing one of its most successful summers, having begun eight years ago with 30 students – many of whom were underprivileged – and growing to about 600 students now.
All this suggests that there is a demand for serious learning among the young today: “The academic radicalism of recent decades is receding, and students are ready to be serious again.” But, as pointed out in the article, a great-books curriculum is in short supply at many colleges. The author did acknowledge, however, that a small group of dedicated professors “have been working to restore the Great Books’ prominence in a liberal arts education,” and went on to mention the works of Princeton’s James Madison Program, Brown’s Political Theory Project, and Dartmouth’s Daniel Webster Project, among others as academic centers that are trying to make a difference in their colleges.
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