Book It to the South Side

By Matt Wood in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 9, 2006 2:06PM

Sometimes Chicagoist wishes that all we had to do each day was read. Get up, have some coffee, plow through a classic every other day, and then discuss them with interesting people. Instead, we skim the news and blog about it for you yahoos. Not nearly as fulfilling (we kid). But if that's the life we wanted, we should have gone to Shimer College.

Shimer calls itself "The Great Books College of the Midwest," because its curriculum is shaped around reading the canon of Western culture. Almost two-thirds of students' credits are taken in Great Books courses, where they read, read, read, then talk amongst themselves in small discussion groups. The school recently moved from its Waukegan campus to a space on the South Side at the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. If that sounds like not enough space for a bunch of bookworms, that's because there are only 100 of them, one of the smallest student bodies in the country. Shimer relocated to try to boost enrollment.

In the meantime, we'll go back to our secondary sources and wish we read more books. Maybe we can start a college with a news feed curriculum.