Dear Bob, *

From the beginning I had budgeted my time supporting the de-throning movement as "Don Quixote" time. Now, I have a new challenge -- show the strength of my character by not gloating to my UC alumni, friend detractors. I could hardly believe that Max Weismann was not pulling my leg when he called to advise me.

Your methods demonstrated a finess that I suspect is unparalleled in the annals of alumni-trustee battles in major universities. As a fellow UC Law School Grad, I hope that your success will have demonstrated to some high personages your indispensability in some important future endeavor.

Thanks and all the best wishes for the future.

Sincerely,

Tom Murray

* Robert Stone, founder and guiding force of Concerned Friends of the University of Chicago and without whom these events would not have come to fruition. He is also a member of the Center, and we are pleased to have been able to aid his efforts.

Dear Dr. Adler,

I wish to share my exhilaration with you, for today I received my very own set of The Great Books of the Western World (2nd edition, of course). Roald Dahl, one of my favorite writers of childhood, said that life is composed of a great number of insignificant events and a small number of significant ones. For me, this day is certainly one of the latter. I must add that I purchased this set, which was not easy for a poor student, because its cornerstone is your Syntopicon, which is the most insightful, most organized, and most comprehensive guide to great writers and their ideas that I have ever encountered.

I will soon begin my third year of medical school, which, in the present age, consists primarily of the acquisition of organized knowledge; thus, human anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, pharmacology, human physiology, and other such courses, coupled with lengthy multiple choice examinations, constitute the factory plan for producing a "modern" doctor. Occasionally, the Dean will quote Hippocrates, and we sometimes gather in small groups to have "bull sessions" (as you correctly describe them) about topics in medical ethics, but there is rarely any serious consideration of the nature of medicine, its history, or its aims.

Even though I recognize the inadequacies of my education, both "medical" and otherwise, I know that it is my responsibility to seek out those teachers and those books that will improve my ability to read, to write, to listen, and to reason. You, more than anyone, have shown me just how important it is to continually strive to master these areas of intellectual pursuit -- even though such mastery requires a lifetime.

Finally, as all good students ought to do, I would like to express my gratitude for the many hours that you have spent teaching me about the great conversation and my role in it.

Sincerely yours,

T. David Bourne (new member)

Thank you, Max, for your continuing work with the Center. My wife and I especially enjoy the Great Ideas Online. Each week we look forward to our "dinner discussions" of the Great Ideas. The Center's weekly e-journal never fails to inspire us.

Regards,

John & Wendy Segvich

During her college search, my daughter and I visited St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. Not only has this college retained a strong academic core, but faculty members formally apply and compete with one another to teach the basic humanities / integrative studies core classes. Being selected is an honor.

She visited St. Johns in Annapolis. She learned of tiny Rose Hill College in South Carolina, with a rigorous Great Books curriculum and a deeply moral atmosphere.

Eventually and happily, she found her way to Shimer College in Waukegan, where the main building is named "Hutchins Hall", the texts are original, and the students are enriched. Thus do a handful of institutions keep alive the vital flame whose protection we can no longer entrust to the large, traditional institutions.

Greg Givan

Dear Dr. Adler and Mr. Weismann,

Having greatly researched the program offered by the University of Chicago, I am rather concerned about the proposed changes. It is somewhat frightening that the University would risk its intellectual integrity through reducing the core curriculum and through expanding the student enrollment. I have a great amount of respect and admiration for the University of Chicago as well as the ideals which it has supported, and I do not wish to see its strong foundation in the liberal arts weakened.

Thank you very much for publishing this information in the Great Ideas Online.

Matthew Thompson (member and high school student)

Dear Max,

One further thought which comes to me from your comment the other day that "the new president could be worse".

When I reflect on it, the primary issue for me in all of this has not been so much the changes in the Core, but the vision of the president as to what a university should be. The president should get that right and be committed to the importance of it. Curriculum must be consistent with that vision. As a non-academic I believe that I do not have the competence to judge whether a particular curriculum meets the test.

I do think that I can make a reasonable judgment whether a president has an adequate vision of the purpose of the university. That, in my view, is the heart of the problem with Sonnenschein. Let me compare what I think his vision of the university is with what I think Hutchins' vision was.

Hutchins, I believe, had a clear and simple vision of what a university should be. It should be a community of scholars. If one pursues the implications of that proposition most things fall into place. The college should be a place where young scholars learn both the skills and what it is necessary to know to be worthy citizens in a democratic society. They should also receive a background which, should they devote their life to scholarship, would permit them to place their learning in the context of a meaningful world. Similar specifics as to graduate education also follow from the concept of a university as a community of scholars.

Sonnenschein, to the contrary, views a university as a manufacturer and distributor of educational products. As an economist this view comes naturally to him. The product lines are the BA, MA, MS, and Ph.D. As with any producer, the university should be keenly alert to what the educational market wants. If it wants vocational education, that is what the university should provide. Naming a new position "Vice President of Marketing" was a clear indication of what he had in mind.

One can state the issue concerning the watering down (however minimally) of the Core in different ways, which, when all is said and done, come out at the same place. First, you could argue that watering down the Core is getting on a slippery slope. When do you stop watering? I would prefer to take the position that rather than getting into the issue of the details of the change to the Core, I do not want to have the future of the Core in the hands of someone with the Sonnenschein vision of a university.

An analogy -- in 1992 George Bush was charged with having a "vision problem". That is what I think the problem has been with Sonnenschein.

I would love to be able to convince the Trustees that the first thing they should look at in a new candidate for president is his vision of what a university should be. How does he articulate his vision? How strong is his commitment to it? How well founded is it in his experience? Does he have the skills to persuade others that his vision is worthy?

Marketing should follow, not precede, the vision. Once the vision is right, the university has a basis for selling itself to students and donors. Sonnenschein had it backwards.

As I think on it, I agree with you that it is too early for me to reinstate my commitment to the University of Chicago. I pray that the current victory does not turn out to be hollow.

Regards,

Tom Murray

EDUCATION?

The word is used so loosely that to talk about "education" without qualifying adjectives attached to it is not informative; or worse, it is misleading.

The qualifying adjectives I suggest are "general" and "special," "preparatory" and "continuing," "terminal" and "unending." Most people think of education as something that goes on in educational institutions, schools, colleges, and universities. They regard persons who have earned a diploma, a certificate, or a degree as individuals who, to some extent, have been educated.

They forget that individuals learn a great deal with little or no schooling. They forget that experience teaches, and that learning by any means is part of a lifelong educational process. Schools of all grades and kinds are only one group of means in the pursuit of education.

A much better question to ask is: Who is a generally educated human being? The negative answer is easy; certainly not any person who has just earned a diploma: a degree, or some other sort of certification.

Youth itself is the greatest obstacle to becoming a generally educated human being. Schooling at its best is preparatory. In addition, it is often specialized, preparing individuals for some forms of skilled work or for professional expertise. Finally, it is terminal: it can be completed in a relatively few years.

When the school is liberal, when it trains individuals in the liberal arts that are the arts of learning, it is preparatory. Those who are liberally trained to read and write, speak and listen, measure and calculate, have acquired the skills to go on learning after they have graduated, but unless they continue to learn year after year, they are likely never to become generally educated human beings. If the liberal training they receive in school includes a taste of all the major disciplines they will have some awareness of what there is to learn in order to become generally educated by the end of their lives.

Becoming a generally educated person is a lifelong process. It is an unending pursuit of learning, concluded by death but never finished or terminated by death. In my judgement, sixty is the age at which one can begin to become generally educated, on condition, of course, that the process has been continuing after all schooling has been finished.

After age sixty, one is fully mature and experienced, has been challenged by all the intricate problems of living, has done a great deal of conversing, and is finally ready to make and defend solutions to life's major problems, or to acknowledge the existence of problems to which one can find no satisfactory solutions.

Individuals whose schooling was specialized rather than liberal and who do not continue learning when they leave schooling behind, or do so only to improve their specialized expertise, never become generally educated human beings. This statement holds for most physicians, lawyers, and engineers, as well as for most who getting a Ph.D. merely indicated the field of specialization they would cultivate thereafter.

Mortimer Adler

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