great books or great works

An article in the New Yorker asks, What's so great about the great books?  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20/whats-so-great-about-great-books-courses-roosevelt-montas-rescuing-socrates 

How you feel about that subject might hinge on what you see the purpose of eduction being. Is it to provide a career, or to provide a sense of your own humanity? 

My daughter went to Columbia University mentioned in the article and as a freshman and sophomore was required to take the Core Curriculum as were other liberal arts majors. The idea is that all would be required to read and discuss a number of books considered important to our civilization. The Core Curriculum is considered to be a sacred part of the Columbia experience and was to bring students to a common understanding of human culture.

Otto Salomon, one of the founders of Educational Sloyd discussed two primary purposes of education. One he described as economic, that of preparing students to earn livings upon graduation. The other Salomon described as "formative" in that it did exactly what Columbia University proposes as the outcome of the Core Curriculum... bring the students to a common understanding of their own humanity and place within human culture.

But there is a difference between Educational Sloyd and the Core Curriculum in that Sloyd proposed the education of the hands, a thing not to be found in books alone.

While my daughter was at Columbia University, I tried to contact university president Lee Bolinger proposing to alter the core curriculum to bring students to learn about human culture by doing real work in the real world of craftsmanship. Of course I was unsuccessful. Who would listen to a woodworker from Arkansas. But craftsmanship is the real core of civilization and culture, and Socrates sucks in comparison to what students can learn from the real world.

Right across the street from the university is the unfinished cathedral, St. John the Divine, and the opportunity it presents is obvious. What could be better for college freshmen than to get real world experience chiseling stone?

To do so would fit the basic principles of educational Sloyd, most particularly that of moving from the concrete to the abstract.

Make, fix and create...