St. John's College, U. S.

St. John's College describes itself as one college on two campuses: St. John's College, Annapolis and St. John's College, Santa Fe. St. John's College, Annapolis was chartered in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the U.S. The College incorporated the assets of King William's school, a grammar or preparatory school founded in 1696.

Criticism and Controversy

St. John's curriculum has drawn criticism and inspired controversy since its inception. It went far beyond the then-existing Columbia University and University of Chicago Great Books programs in making the Great Books the entire curriculum rather than one of many courses of study, and in extending the Great Books approach to the sciences as well as the humanities.

Related Topics:
Columbia University - University of Chicago

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Writing in 1938, just after the first group of freshmen completed their first semester under the new curriculum, Stringfellow Barr{{ref|barr1938}} insisted that there was nothing radical about the curriculum and that it was

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:merely carrying out the terms of the eighteenth century charter of St. John's and restoring discipline in the liberal arts and an acquaintance with our intellectual heritage in place of the vocational interests and cafeteria courses that clutter our liberal arts curricula today.

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He referred to "opponents of the St. John's program" and said that they consider it "authoritarian and fascist." He said that some "suspect that some sort of Catholic indoctrination is being attempted" because of the inclusion of Aristotle and medieval scholastic works in the curriculum, while "Catholic educators have denounced the list for including Marx and Freud."

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Writing in 1944, Sidney Hook{{ref|hook}} quotes Bertrand Russell

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:The subject on which you write is one about which I feel very strongly. I think the 'Best Hundred Books' people are utterly absurd on the scientific side. I was myself brought up on Euclid and Newton and I can see the case for them. But on the whole Euclid is much too slow-moving. Boole is not comparable to his successors. Descartes' geometry is surpassed by every modern textbook of analytical geometry. The broad rule is: historical approach where truth is unattainable, but not in a subject like mathematics or anatomy.

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and Albert Einstein:

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:In my opinion there should be no compulsory reading of classical authors in the field of science.... lectures concerning the historical development of ideas in different fields are of great value for intelligent students, for such studies are furthering very effectively the independence of judgment and independence from blind belief in temporarily accepted views. I believe that such lectures should be treated as a kind of beautiful luxury and the students should not be bothered with examinations concerning historical facts.

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St. John's provokes to an intensified degree the long-standing question of whether a liberal arts degree is suitable preparation for modern-day employment. In 1937, Robert Hutchins insisted that other educational methods "fail in all respects—we don't get either good practitioners or well-educated people." He said that thirty-six industries in Minneapolis and St. Paul, answering a questionnaire, said that they preferred "no specific education in schools" for their workers.{{ref|hutchins}}

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