The Case for Parnassus

WHY the classics? This question has dominated the education debate for decades now. The late Mortimer Adler made an impressive case for the Greeks, and other greats, as a source of good answers to the problems of philosophy. But Adler received the following rejoinder from W. H. Auden, in a 1940 essay:

Most [adults] are reading only in order to escape from their own thoughts or to be socially respectable. If they are to improve, the first thing to say to them is not—“You don’t read