The Crisis in Contemporary Education

"...If there is philosophical wisdom as well as scientific knowledge, if the former consists of insights and ideas that change little from time to time, and if even the latter has many abiding concepts and a relatively constant method, if the great works of literature as well as of philosophy touch upon the permanent moral problems of mankind and express the universal convictions of men involved in moral conflict -- if these things are so, then the great books of ancient and medieval, as well as modern, times are a repository of knowledge and wisdom, a tradition of culture which must initiate each new generation. The reading of these books is not for antiquarian purposes; the interest is not archaeological or philological. That was the type of interest which dominated the humanistic course in the German gymnasium, and was "classical education" at its worst. Rather the books are to be read because they are as contemporary today as when they were written, and that because the problems they deal with and the ideas they present are not subject to the law of perpetual and interminable progress. The fact that the ancients and medievals were wrong in many matters of scientific knowledge, the fact that even Newton and Galileo were wrong in their turn, makes no difference to the philosophical accomplishments of these periods, nor even to the insights and procedures of the great masters of science..." Read the Article

-Morimer Adler from The Social Frontier, February, 1939, Vol. V, No. 42, pp. 140-145.