The Great Books

Northfield's curricula is based in part upon the Great Books book list. In addition to Great Books Friday, in which, at morning convocation, Northfield teacher Garrett Jeter leads the school in a discussion based upon readings from the books, we offer two Great Books courses in our Upper School curriculum. The Great Books are also integrated into our literature, history, and science classes.

The goal in such study is to allow students to recognize, appreciate, and understand the true, the good, and the beautiful. We strive to create an atmosphere in which truth speaks, as it does in this collection of literature through the ages.

Assembled in the 1920s and 1930s by a team of American academics headed by Mortimer Adler, the Great Books series is a compliation of the essential writings of Western Civilization. The books were chosen according to three primary criteria: each book must have "contemporary significance; that is, it has relevance to the problems and issues of our times"; it must be "inexhaustible," able to be "read again and again with benefit"; and it must be "relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries."

On The Great Conversation by Becky Elder
There are some incredible citizens in the Northfield community. Start with Adam and Eve, move through Abraham and Moses. Sit down with Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Shakespeare, Rasputin, Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, T.S. Eliot, Albert Einstein, Copernicus, Archimedes, Winston Churchill, even Robin Hood. What an incredible scene! (more)