belief that school should pursue intellectual ideas rather than practical, he also believed that schools should not teach a specific set of values. "It is not the object of a college to make its students good, because the college cannot do it; if it tries to do it, it will fail; it will weaken the agencies that should be discharging this responsibility, and it will not discharge its own responsibility." The schools should not be in the business of teaching students what is right and just; it should be in the business of helping students make their own determinations. Critics will point out that the great books do not have one answer to what justice is or isn't. In fact, there are many contradictory answers to this question. But what some see as a weakness, Hutchins sees as a strength. Hutchins asserts that students should be exposed to these conflicting ideas so that they may weigh and balance them in their own minds, boiling down the arguments and synthesizing a view of their own. In this way, and only in this way, can students learn what justice, beauty, and good really are. Works 1936, No Friendly Voice 1936, The Higher Learning in America 1943, Education for Freedom 1945, The Atomic Bomb versus Civilization 1947, The Education We Need 1947, The Works of the Mind: The Administrator 1949, St. Thomas and the World State 1949, The State of the University, 1929–1949 1950 Morals, Religion, and Higher Education 1950, The Idea of a College 1952, The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education (includes The Tradition of the West) 1953, The University of Utopia 1953, The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society 1954, Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education 1956, Some Observations on American Education 1956, Freedom, education and the Fund; essays and addresses, 1946–1956 1963, Gateway to the Great Books 1968, The Learning Society 1968, Zuckerkandl! 1969, No Friendly Voice (reprint) 1972, Prospects for a Learning Society See also Educational perennialism Great Books Great Books of the Western World Liberal education College of the University of Chicago Shimer College, and St. John's College whose Great Books Curricula are derived from the Hutchins Plan References Sources Ashmore, Harry Scott. Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1989. Bates, Stephen. An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee That Redefined Freedom