The decades since the 1960s have been unfortunate in many respects for American higher education, but things are not uniformly bleak. Here and there, the study of Great Books persists. The general picture that is available, then, of the health of great-books study in colleges today is mixed. High-visibility news stories, along with curriculum…

The debate over teaching the "canon," a collection of great books authored by Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Kant, Darwin, and others that has traditionally represented the Western intellectual tradition, as a core of the college curriculum, is examined. Discussion begins with a description of how the canon has been taught from ancient…