As community colleges increasingly embrace their vocational role at the expense of their general education mission, the author of this chapter argues that a curriculum centered on a "Great Books" canon as developed by Mortimer Adler in the 1920s would revitalize liberal education at community colleges and serve both the general education…

Many students enter classes like the Shakespeare character Caliban, knowing books to be powerful but feeling eluded by them, unable to access their knowledge. Author Jill Wright shares new-found inspiration and insight she discovered while co-directing Act III, Scene ii of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and suddenly realized a…

An urban community college routinely assigns Swift, Plato, Joyce, and other classic authors of the Western tradition to its immigrant and minority students. Bruce Gans, who founded and directs the program, tells of the value of Great Books to those who have the most to gain from rising above race, culture, and class.

American schools have debated the merits of a national canon since the inception of English as a subject a century ago. In earlier years, the mission of the language arts was much more elitist and hierarchical. English was a subject that taught the great works, so that aspiring students could be familiar with the standard pantheon of authors and…