Not at all – it’s the materials, the books, the lectures, the teachers, that need to be the best, in order to bring out the best in all of our students. The educational culture in which students are immersed strongly influences their subsequent intellectual growth and development. This was Dr. Adler’s point in the above quotation cited: the best education is not just best for some students, it is best for all students.

“In the early 1930s, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins was asked whether Great Books seminars, then open only to a picked handful of students, should be accessible to all the students in our colleges. His brief reply was crisp and clear. He said that the Great Books seminars in our public schools and in our colleges should be open to all the students there, not only to the few who select them or are specially selected.” – Mortimer J.Adler