Essay / Education

Two Ways to Study Great Books: Torrey Honors Institute

Torrey Two pic Everything that we post here at the Scriptorium Daily is an overflow from the learning community we have in the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola. The faculty members who contribute to this blog all teach in our great books program. All the faculty teach all the books, so we’re always stepping on each other’s toes, academically speaking.

There are two different ways for our college students to work through the books: some do a chronological survey that starts with Homer and ends with C. S. Lewis; others do a series of thematic investigations around perennial questions in the Western tradition.

While we’ve been doing the chronological survey for over ten years, the thematic approach is relatively new for us (only four years). In early October we held a public meeting for current Torrey students and local alumni to come hear a full explanation of how the two approaches work together and what that means for the future of the program.

This hour-long podcast in the Middlebrow series is now available online. It’s a fun event with a live audience, providing the inside story on how we’re doing at one of the most successful Christian great books programs in the world. Alumni and parents will want to hear it, but everybody is welcome to click through and overhear it.

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