The Goal of Reading Great Books

Students in the Rhetoric School are hard at work nearing the end of the first trimester. At the Upper School, students take exams after the first and third trimester to start developing the study habits that will serve them in college and beyond. Tenth graders taking European Literature have started off the year with Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. “When it comes to the Great Books, my concern is actually not retention of the material,” says teacher Tyler MacDowall. “What makes Great Books great is that they’re not easily retainable. There’s so much going on in Les Miserables, that you could read it probably 50 times and still get different things out of it. Inability to be mastered is what makes Great Books great.” Instead, Mr. MacDowall says, “What I’m trying to teach them is not to master the text, but to love the text. I think that’s the classical goal of literature. I am never going to teach them Les Miserables this year, but I am going to join them in reading Les Miserables.” One of Mr. MacDowall’s hopes is for students not just to love the text or to be interested in reading, but to fundamentally see the beauty of the text.