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2016
Great
Books
STUDENTS PONDER GREAT
WORKS OF LITERATURE AT
GUTENBERG COLLEGE
GUTENBERG COLLEGE DISCUSSES THE WORKS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION By Rick Levin
O
nce upon a time in the way back when, the
role of higher education was not to prepare
you for the treadmill by clipping you into a
human coupon but, rather, to help you seek
your better self through a spirit of open
inquiry into the civilization in which fate had somehow
plunked you. Sure, it’s an ideal, and that’s the point.
College is supposed to be formative, not formulaic —
revelatory, not rote. It’s supposed to make you a better
person instead of a better cog.
At Gutenberg College, a “Great Books” liberal arts
college in Eugene at 18th and University, this classic and
all-too-rare spirit of inquiry and participation in one’s own
education, equal parts Socratic and egalitarian, is the
guiding principal.
Housed in a large brick colonial near the University of
Oregon campus, Gutenberg currently has a student body of
26 undergraduates, a preponderance of whom live at the
college; about half of the students are from outside
Oregon, and a small percentage are from overseas. The
school, which is a nonprofit corporation, offers a four-year
bachelor's degree in liberal arts, with about a third of
students moving on to graduate school and many going on
to teaching jobs. There are four full-time faculty members
at Gutenberg, called tutors, as well as five part-time
adjuncts. Annual tuition is $12,000.
The school's small size and staff are mirrored in the
pedagogical intimacy of its classroom dynamics. Rather than
prepared lectures at Gutenberg, small classes of students —
rarely more than five or six at a time — sit and discuss the
canonical works of Western Civilization in a comfortable
setting, facilitated by a tutor who prompts the discussion but
often takes a backseat to the students’ own curiosity.
And, yes, the Gutenberg project is to view great books
through a Christian lens (called the “biblical worldview”
on the school’s website), but contrary to a lot of received
opinion about what constitutes a Christian college, the
religious aspect at Gutenberg is more open-ended than
resolved. According to tutor Tim McIntosh, who also
recruits for the college, “we believe equally and earnestly
in the freedom of thought.”
The idea is that faith, ultimately, is a private matter, best
arrived at by exposing students to the whole range of
literature and ideas, from The Epic of Gilgamesh and The
Iliad up through St. Anselm, Rousseau and, yes, Nietzsche,
the German existentialist philosopher who famously
claimed, “God is dead.”
McIntosh says that the openness and free flow of ideas
at Gutenberg College can initially be off-putting for
parents who find their freshman daughter coming home at
ping off each other as they dissect Homer’s depiction of
Achilles, Agamemnon and the role of Greek gods in
determining human affairs. The conversation flows
organically, allowing the students to work their way
toward insight and understanding.
Gutenberg student Meredith Bishop says she opted for
Gutenberg because, rather than the “job training provided
by most university programs,” she desired “a well-rounded
education that would make me a better thinker and a better
person. More than anything, I wanted to learn to think as
an individual.”
According to Bishop, now a senior at the college, “the
focus on discussion in Gutenberg classrooms allows the
‘We believe equally and earnestly
in the freedom of thought.’
— TIM MCINTOSH, GUTENBERG TUTOR
Christmas break and suddenly declaring herself a fierce
feminist, but such is the way of students allowed to think
for themselves. “It’s hard and scary to give so much
freedom to the students,” he says, “because if you give it
to them and you really mean it, you don’t know where
they’ll go with it.”
But, McIntosh adds, such freedom combined with
issues of faith creates “a tension that I don’t think we ever
will resolve and we don’t want to resolve.”
The value of such methodology becomes clear in the
classroom setting, where a small clutch of students — all
of them well-read, well-spoken and intensely curious —
students to really grapple with the material,” an experience
that has given her “a far greater understanding of the
complexities and subtleties of the material.”
And, for Bishop, such complexities and subtleties
extend to the school’s religious bent. “While Gutenberg is
a Christian school, Christianity is not assumed as a set of
first principles in the classroom,” she explains. “The tutors
and many of the students belong to the Christian faith, yet
the validity of any set of beliefs is never taken for granted.
Everything, including the meaning and validity of the
Christian faith, is up for discussion and debate.”
For more information about Gutenberg College, visit gutenberg.edu.
eugeneweekly.com • October 13, 2016
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