Patrick J. Deneen, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, argues that teaching the Great Books is essentially worthless if the teacher treats them all as equally true.

contemporary arguments on behalf of the Great Books are often as pernicious, and even indistinguishable from, the forms of value relativism that they purport to combat. Many conservative academics have become lazy in the defense of the Great Books, content to let the phrase stand in for a deeper and potentially more contentious examination of the various arguments within those books and the West itself, and of the need for university faculties to provide some kind of organized and well-formed guidance to students on how best to approach these texts.

In short, teachers must have a bias for the truth in order to guide students through these great works. Reality must be recognized in the classroom. Because if an interest in ideas, no matter how ridiculous, is the highest virtue for a teacher, it barely matters what he is teaching. The outcome will be similar. Students will believe their own opinions are the only ones that matter, regardless their merits.