A Summer Seminar That Changes Lives

Students discuss the seminar text. (Courtesy of Marsha Enright)

It’s summertime, and once again young men and women, most of them high school or college students, gathered in Chicago for a week of Great Connections seminars and activities focusing on some of life’s most basic questions, such as “How do I know what I know?” or “How do I build a life of meaning and creative achievement?”

When they return to their homes, many of them carry with them an array of unexpected gifts.

“The good thing is that they’ve taken more control of their path,” Marsha Familaro Enright, founder of The Great Connections Seminars (GCS), said. “They’re more consciously aware about it, and that helps them navigate the situation. It’s so important to know that you’re the one in charge of your education.”

Ms. Enright brings decades of work in education and personal study to this endeavor. In college, she became so fascinated with the philosophy of Maria Montessori that, in 1990, she helped found Chicago’s Council Oak Montessori School, which today is considered one of the city’s premier private academies.

Soon Ms. Enright’s interests shifted to higher education, which was moving away from teaching the Great Books and Western studies while tamping down on free speech and thought. In 2006, she founded The Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, a countermeasure to these trends in the universities, with an added emphasis on teaching entrepreneurship to the young. Three years later, the Institute hosted its first Great Connections Summer Seminar.

The Way It Works

The students who gather for these seminars find themselves involved in a variety of activities, all aimed at deepening their skills in reasoning and communication while also becoming “entrepreneurs of their own lives.”

GSC offers very few formal lectures. Instead, the students discuss the daily reading assigned for a particular meeting.

“We might have a day where we read a selection by Plato,” Ms. Enright said. “We learn about logical fallacies. We might read a passage from José Ortega y Gasset. We have facilitators for each seminar, and what you want to do is to make sure everyone’s being included and participating. We want a real dialogue between people.”

Students also learn to become better listeners.

“Sometimes, the very high-achieving ones have this idea that they have to talk all the time,” Ms. Enright said, “so we try to encourage them to listen more and actually bond to what the other person is saying instead of sitting there and thinking, ‘What am I going to say next?’ And the thing is, once you learn how to do this well, you get such a great conversation going. You’re learning what they’re thinking, and you’re responding to it. Those skills are so useful when you go to work.”

Two students during an economics lesson on the streets of Chicago. (Courtesy of Marsha Enright)

Learning also takes place outside of these discussions. Students participate in walking tours of Chicago, learning the city’s history and architecture as well as the parts that freedom and entrepreneurship played in its construction. Afterward, they’re broken up into teams and sent on an architectural scavenger hunt.

“They have to find different landmarks and take pictures of themselves there,” Ms. Enright said. “They’re together with each other, and it’s kind of a puzzle, so they have fun.”

Derick Ansah participates in GCS's walking tours in Chicago. (Courtesy of Marsha Enright)

Another unusual aspect of the seminars is the improv comedy exercises, where students spontaneously create humorous situations.

“Believe it or not, improv is very similar to what you do in the Socratic seminars,” Ms. Enright said. “You want to really pay attention to what the person is saying and make sure you’re responding to them, no matter how crazy it is, and make it even funnier.”

Lasting Impressions

According to Ms. Enright, 27 percent of these students maintain contact with GCS once they leave. Many of them take the lessons that they’ve learned and apply them to their lives and their work.

Ivy Hood, who attended GCS when it was just getting underway, was then in high school and preparing for college.

“I was already pretty ‘nerdy,’ but the seminars refreshed my excitement for advanced and lifelong learning. ... The seminars were also a great way to learn how to respectfully and productively converse/debate with others, in an academic setting or otherwise, and also to gain a little bit of independence during formative years.”

Brendan Moore and Marina Coll explain their thoughts during a Socratic discussion of "The Objectivist Ethics." (Courtesy of Marsha Enright)

Students actively engage in discussion, demonstrating Maria Montessori's quote that "The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I did not exist.'” (Courtesy of Marsha Enright)

In 2014, Kyle Novak had just graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a double major in philosophy and religious studies when he came to GCS. Since then, he has earned several graduate degrees, crediting some of his achievements with techniques that he learned that summer:

“Exercises such as the ‘echo,’ where in order to speak, a participant must acknowledge what the previous speaker said in a meaningful way ... The exercises for structuring discussion are probably what helped me the most going through grad school and now working as a professor.”

Regret and Resolution

Two GCS respondents offered similar accounts of the GCS experience, but also added a somewhat broader take regarding the program’s effect on them. Ryan Griggs, now CEO of Griggs Capital Strategies, attended GCS in 2016 and 2017.

“I remember very clearly thinking as we walked down the streets of Chicago on a walking tour with a renowned architect, ‘Wow. Is this really what education can be like?’” Mr. Griggs said.

He later added, “While I look back fondly on my time in the Great Connections, I can’t help but also feel sad about it. I spent over 15 years in conventional public education. I got 2 weeks of the Socratic Method and the Great Connections. I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like if the numbers were switched.”

Students work on a writing assignment from their Socratic Scribbling lesson. (Courtesy of Marsha Enright)

Scott McGinley, who attended GCS those same two summers, wrote what amounted to an essay singing the praises of this program. He concludes with this high compliment:

“My wife is expecting our first son this August and we intend to homeschool. Through these seminars I will certainly intend to implement something similar in his and our future children’s education; I can’t think of a better way to learn the classics and so much more with a group of homeschoolers than this.”

Next on the Agenda

Ms. Enright, who isn’t one to rest on her laurels, has for the past several years spearheaded the creation of a new school, Reliance College, and its goal “is for students to become self-reliant individuals, able to defend and advance a free society.” She estimates that the Chicago-based college will launch by 2026. It’s to be the school dreamed of by Ryan Griggs, imbued with the principles and practices of the Great Connections Seminars.

Meanwhile, these GCS alumni and Ms. Enright have an important message for the rest of us: High schoolers, college students, and all other adults possess the power to be entrepreneurs of their own learning and education.