The Good and the Bad When Dealing with the Great

If you've heard this before...
Skip down to the next header. I got my Bachelors degree from St. John's College otherwise known as the "Great Books" school. Students follow a core curriculum in math, language, music, lab, and seminar in which only (or predominantly) primary sources are used and secondary ones are eschewed. The seminar reading list chronologically (loosely) follows the Great Books of Western Civilization, beginning with Homer's Iliad (Freshman year) and concluding with 20th Century works (senior year). There is much to be said and explained about the school (in addition to the lack of textbooks: there are no grades and no exams), so I encourage you to search through the college website (link above). Now that you have the background...

The Good and the Bad
Someone suggested that I reflect on the pros and cons of receiving this kind of education. I have been thinking about this for some time, but I always seem to struggle with the cons. The pros seem obvious to me: you are groomed to become a life-long learner, you have a naturally interdisciplinary approach and therefore feel prepared to enter any subsequent field of study, you develop a healthy disrespect for so-called "experts" while generating a healthy respect for history, you believe that given time-you can figure anything out because you've been given the skills to do so, you understand that the way you live and who you are are not distinct entities, you think everything is or could be really funny, you experience the impact of a true community, you understand that you alone are responsible for choices you make in life...literally, the list goes on and on! But what about the cons-the drawbacks-the bad stuff? There must be some, right?

Is there a con?
First, there are some little cons people name-foremost being: what do you do with that kind of degree? It is true that to enter some professions students may have to do some post-bacc work. However, the people who ask these kinds of questions are carrying an implicit empirical notion that the greatest good of education is that you be able to "do something." If this is argued not to be the greatest good or aim of education then the con crumbles. I think this argument is easily made and so fast forward to the crumbling of that con. However, there is a real con that exists. I once described this con simply as "graduation," but I will elaborate here. First, it's important to know that I myself once held some strange preconceptions about what it meant to study in a Great Books program.

Confession
In high school, I was a straight A, honors, AP nerd. I took all kinds of college prep. I applied to St. John's under the misconception that because of its low numbers (8:1 student:faculty ratio), refusal to accept credit from any other institution (all my AP and college prep was for naught), and historical presence (it is the 3rd oldest college in the nation) it would be very difficult to get in. If it gives you a sense of my thinking: Harvard was a safety school and St. John's was the unattainable. My guidance counselor was positive that I was on crack because, in short, I applied to St. John's because I wanted to be a member of the intellectually elite.

In reality
Mid-way through my freshmen year I learned the truth that St. John's had an 85% acceptance rate. In fact, there was nothing elite about it. By then I was already so hooked on the pros listed above that the original goal didn't matter. That was good because I really need to emphasize how absolutely NOT elite the school is. Everyone is in the same course of study and there is no power in referencing a specific text or author. That's what and who EVERYONE is reading or going to be expected to read. And the truth is, the total lack of elitism is nice.

The Graduation Con
So this big con (or downside) is that after 4 years of non-elitism, you really forget what it's like to live in a world where people form preconceptions about who or what you are on the basis of what you choose to read. You forget that there will not be a common referent which equalizes all members of a conversation. And you have no idea that even the people who form no preconceptions of you because they're also reading the books you love have no sense of an environment where preconceptions of this kind do not exist. So basically, the con is that this thing you've come to embrace so whole-heartedly in your 4 years, is almost totally untranslatable to those without that experience. Most simply don't believe that such an environment exists and who can blame them? They have not experienced it.

Which brings me to the church...
Isn't this the same quandary we have in describing our Christian walk to the world? How do you tell someone that they need to have a relationship with God when they don't see the need? How do you tell those people who are leading pretty satisfied lives that there's so much more that they are missing?

I don't know. How do you tell someone they need a Great Books education?

What I'm reading: Pensees (selected) by Blaise Pascal; The Book Thief by Markus Zusak; Judges (The Bible)