17 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/de2281fce0bdfae826f0315e1059711b.pdf 22e591d607fe14fa8eea3840af113bd2 PDF Text Text No. 3 VOLUME Ill BULLETIN OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND SEPTEMBER, 1951 Founded as King William's School, 1696. Chartered as St.John's College, 1785 �Volume III SEPTEMBER, 1951 Number 3 Published quarterly Entered as Second-class matter, February 18, 1949, at the Post Office, at Annapolis, Maryland, under the Act of August 24, 1912. �REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT To THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS: The warfare which broke out in Korea in late June 1950 has had · vitable repercussions upon the colleges and universities of the nation. ~;r most institutions unce:tainty. has been tl~e char~cteris~ic of the academic year just en de?. T~1s f eel:ng has man1fested 1tsel~ ii: the areas of administrative plannmg, 10struct10n, student morale, bu1ldmg programs and college finances. Most institutions recalled the lean days of W odd War II and prepared to weather the new storm by seeking ROTC units, by pruning faculty ranks, by slashing budgets and by competing vigorously for the limited supply of draft-free freshmen. One of the worst features of the year was the uncertainty as to congressional action in the matter of Selective Service and Universal Military Training. The protracted committee hearings and debates in the Congress depressed student morale and produced more than one flurry of enlistment as students felt themselves about to be tapped by their local draft boards. Naturally . t~~s uncer~ainty was translated into the classroom and other campus act1v1t1es and m no way fostered the learning process. The tremendous stimulus to inflation which the war in Korea produced likewise had its effect upon institutions of higher learning. College business managers sought vainly to avoid mounting deficits in the face of rising costs and falling enrollments. Supplies and equipment costs exceeded budget figures. Soaring food prices forced increases in dining hall fees. Funds already in hand for new construction proved inadequate. The high cost of living multiplied the problems of the already underpaid faculty member. Meanwhile friends and alumni found themselves hard pressed by their own household budgets and by mounting taxes. This naturally had an adverse effect on the success of financial campaigns to relieve the plight of the colleges. St. John's College was no exception to the rule and, like most colleges and universities, felt the impact of war throughout the academic year. Student enrollment decreased moderately and the College found itself operating with a slight deficit. In the face of the general hysteria which characterized some college campuses, it should be said to the credit of the St. John's student body that only one student left college prematurely to enlist and avoid the draft. The esprit de corps of the student body remained remarkably high, although the general unsettlement of the �country manifested itself in other ways. Another evidence of the uncertainty of the times was the preoccupation of the nation with anti-subversive legislation and with hearings on the loyalty of individual citizens. The most noteworthy example of an institution affected by this type of legislation was the University of California, where a considerable number of faculty members were summarily dismissed for their refusal to comply with the dictum of the regent~ . Many educators have stood out against this trend in the United States and have feared a dangerous blow to academic freedom by the heavy hand of political control. Some members of the St. John's faculty felt it their duty to bring this position to the attention of the people of Maryland at the time of the referendum on the Subversive Activities Act of 1949, in November of this past year. While cognizant of the latent dangers in the current situation, the group feared that the ultimate issue of such legislation might be to jeopardize freedom of inquiry. Moreover, history suggests that oaths are often forerunners of other tests of loyalty not immediately contemplated. Admission of Women Probably the most far-reaching action taken by the College during the year and one which was certainly prompted by the war situation was the decision of the Hoard to open St. John's College to women students in the fall of 19 51. This step represented a distinct departure with 2 5 5 years of tradition, but it was almost uniformly applauded by alumni and friends of the College. I believe that the decision was a wise one and that the instruction and the general life of the College will be benefited. Such a decision could not have been taken had not a majority of both Faculty and Board members considered co-education good in principle for St. John's College. The fact that the step was taken in December of 1950, rather than two or three years hence, is definitely attributable to the war in Korea and the anticipated drop in male enrollments. I consider the College most fortunate to have obtained the services of Barbara H. Leonard of Oberlin, Ohio, to be tutor and Assistant Dean for women. Miss Leonard is herself a graduate of Oberlin College, the first co-educational college in this country. She is a scientist, holding her doctor's degree in zoology from the University of Rochester. For the past six years she has taught at Smith College. I believe that she combines in an unusual way the teaching, administrative and counseling skills necessary to this position. �It appears that t~ere will be approximately 2 5 women in the er:tering class this fall, .commg from as far a.field as Mas~achusetts, Geo~g~a and California. It is true that the announcement relative to the admission of women was made somewhat late in the year and that it was perhaps not publicized as widely as it might have been. I suspect, however, that the rigors of th.e St. Jo~n' s curriculum~ particularly the mathematics ~nd laboratory soences, will prove somethmg of a deterrent to women seekmg a liberal arts education at St. John's. On the other hand, I am equally confident that within the space of two or three years the College will be faced with the problem of selecting from a long waiting list the best fifty or sixty woman candidates for each entering class. Renovations are proceeding this summer on Randall Hall to convert it to the use of women for the coming academic year. This includes complete redecoration of student rooms, installation of a suite for the Assistant Dean, and the creation of reception rooms. It is evident that the present dormitories will be adequate for the housing of men and women for at least two years, after which it will be necessary to erect a women's dormitory, probably on the site of the old heating plant. Faculty This is the first year during which the College has operated under the Polity, which was adopted by the Board of Visitors and Governors at its regular meeting July 8, 1950. All faculty appointments for the coming academic year were made within its terms. This meant that four members . of the faculty who could not be recommended for tenure appointments, had to relinquish their positions. Three other faculty members were not reappointed in view of the expected shrinkage in enrollment, and two tutors accepted positions elsewhere. Appointments to the faculty, in addition to Miss Leonard, include Curtis A. Wilson in the field of Science and a physicist to be announced. Mr. Wilson has been on leave of absence, studying in Italy on a Fulbright Fellowship. These new appointments will compensate in part for the reduction in the size of the faculty, so that the full time teaching staff of the College will number 17 for the coming academic year, as against 23 in the year 1950-51. The student-faculty ratio remains high-approximately seven to one. It is true that the operation of the Polity, an instrument designed to produce greater administrative stability in the College, in this case produced some dissension within faculty ranks because of the decisions reached on reappointments. It should be said, however, that this impact on faculty morale did not cause the teaching in the College to suffer �appreciably. I am also glad to report that those faculty members leaving St. John's have been almost uniformly successful in obtaining new positions elsewhere. I do believe that the personnel changes have not adversely affected the quality of the St. John's faculty. The Curriculum No major changes in curriculum were decided upon by the Instruction Committee, although there were the usual additions, deletions, and rearrangements of the reading list. The Dean reports that seminars and tutorials functioned well, with certain exceptions, but that the laboratory still suffers from technical shortcomings and supervisory deficiencies. Genuine progress has been made in relieving the pressure upon students arising out of the working load, except perhaps in the junior year. On the other hand, excessive absences from academic exercises have become a real problem. The required music tutorial in the freshman year proved successful and will be continued. Participation in the weekly meeting 6f the chorus will be made obligatory for both freshmen and sophomores, and in subsequent years for juniors as well. This will afford some practical application of the principles developed in the tutorials. The four Friday evening concerts by visiting artists were all well received and will be continued. The Instruction Committee decided, however, to drop the evening music lectures in favor of three sophomore music seminars, one each term. Another concern of the Instruction . Committee was to devise ways to improve the writing skill of the student. Instead of requiring term essays the tutors in the language tutorials will now have students write essays in class every third week on subjects announced in advance. Topics may be those arising out of tutorial or seminar discussions, commentaries on texts, polished versions of translations, or matters derived from the Friday night lectures. It is hoped that the writing of at least three essays each term will contribute to the development of writing skills commensurate with those in the field of dialectic. The instruction at St. John's College is constantly facing the problem of correlating adequately the quality of learning with the quantity of material that has to be "learned." Without acquainting the student with certain concrete material, the exploration of which gives rise to a problem and to its formulation, the tutor can hardly expect the student to grasp the universality of the problem and the validity of its formulation. But by the same token, the very exploration of that material tends to absorb �the attention of the student, tends to make him forget the very purpose for the sake of which the exploration is being undertaken. The danger ·s that the student might learn about many things but not understand them ~ell. Or, conversely, he might grasp the nature of the problem in general but not appreciate its real significance and applicability if he cannot build on a concrete basis. Two factors have a bearing on the solution of this problem: ( 1) the teaching ability of the faculty, and ( 2) the teaching tools-the texts, equipment, exercises, and subject matter. The quality of the faculty, of course, always remains a primary concern at St. John's. With respect to teaching tools, the Dean reports that the necessity exists to condense the texts of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton. Some progress in solving the basic problem was made during the year, for the teaching in the mathematics tutorial was actually done on the basis of reduced assignments. Some efforts have been made to write our own texts in algebra and analy~ical geometry, but the basic editing job on the fundamental texts remams. Closely related to the above considerations is the problem of the laboratory. The set-up of the laboratory now seems reasonably adequate. The failures in the laboratory during the past year were attributable primarily to shortcomings in individuals. These will be overcome. The more general grave and fundamental problem continues, however, of how to coordinate the laboratory instruction with the practice of the liberal arts. Weekly meetings of all laboratory tutors with the Dean will help to clarify the issues. Again, the main difficulty is the selection of such exercises in physics, chemistry, and biology as to give the student enough material support to understand the relations between observable fact, hypothesis, theory, and mathematical symbolism, and, beyond that, to understand the assumptions and principles involved in any scientific investigation. The danger lies in too great a concern with material and facts. Student Enrollnzent Student enrollment reacted to the war situation and declined slightly from the preceding year. Total enrollment in September was 168, subsequently increased to 173 by the readmission of four former students and by the enrollment of a Chinese refugee. Two of the readmitted students and the Chinese refugee withdrew and twenty-one other students dropped out during the course of the year. Twelve of these were freshmen; five, sophomores; and four, juniors. Personal or financial �reasons prompted the withdrawal of fourteen of this group, two joined the armed forces and five were dropped by the College. This represents a rate of attrition for the year of 14 per cent, an appreciable improvement over the record of the preceding year. As in other years, there was a wide geographic distribution of students. Twenty-eight states, the District of Columbia, and three foreign countries were represented. Sixty-five students were veterans studying under the G.I. bill, and twenty-three students were married. Thirty-one seniors were graduated in June as compared with twentyeight in 1950. Four others have certain requirements to meet and should be awarded their degrees during the coming year. As in other years, approximately half of the graduates plan further study in graduate or professional schools. This group will undertake work in law, medicine, education, political' science, philosophy, linguistics, international relations, zoology, mathematics and the theatre. A majority of this graduating class are veterans, but at least three are committed to immediate tours with the armed forces. For the second year in succession, one of the graduates goes directly to the public school system of Anne Arundel County, a trend which I hope can be encouraged. Other members of the class are going into business, research and farming. The Students As already mentioned, the general unsettlement of the times was apparent in the student body. Throughout the year there was evidence of continuing dissatisfaction with the operation of the dining hall. The Administration tried to alleviate these conditions but the basic problem remained. A mjnor crisis developed in December at the time of the announcement that women would be admitted to the College. Meetings of the student body expressed dissent, not so much from the principle of co-education at St. John's as from the way in which the decision was reached. The Student Polity did not claim the right to have a voice in the decision but believed that it should have been consulted on a matter of such great interest to the general College community. The Administration, on the other hand, believed that the controversy which would have been provoked by student and other discussion of this matter would have prevented the Board from determining policy in the absence of prejudices and pressures. The ultimate result of this situation was to infuse new life into the Student Polity and its executive committee and to �institute monthly meetings of the Co11ege community at which matters of general interest were discussed. Disciplinary problems became rather acute during the year. On the one hand, there were excessive absences from classroom exercises and from the Friday night lectures. Steps are being taken to correct this situation during the coming year. On the other hand, certain students seemed to exhibit a progressive lack of understanding of the elementary rules that should tacitly or explicitly govern campus life. Certain irregularities led to a series of College meetings and forums in which the students finally voted to surrender their prerogative of self-government with respect to rules of residence. The students made it apparent that they the~selves did n_ot see th~ necessity for a chan~e,_ but. that they were willmg to submit to the Judgment of the Admm1strat10n. New conditions of residence have therefore been promulgated, to become effective with the opening of College in the fall. These rules will still be subject to change in consultation with the Student Polity. I believe that the disciplinary problems at St. John's are no greater than at other colleges . . They can be viewed here, however, only from our general educational perspective. The student is encouraged to question many things which he has previously accepted blindly. On the other hand, the College has to acknowledge the wisdom embodied in written and unwritten laws of social conduct or, if this wisdom is not immediately apparent, to suspend judgment and not try to reform society. To jeopardize the existence of the College for the sake of such an ultimate and uncertain goal would amount to a betrayal of the College's primary educational aims. I am happy to report that the Student Polity voted to establish the position of Polity Treasurer and that the functions of budget making and disbursement of funds for all student activities are now vested in this office. The operation of this plan during the past year has been exceedingly smooth and augurs well for the future. As in preceding years, the Film Club functioned successfully. The King William Players showed a remarkable resurgence of activity and staged a brilliant production of Charles Williams' Tho mas Cranmer of Canterbury, which was widely acclaimed by friends and critics. Reformation also characterized the activities of the Cotillion Board which stimulated greater interest among the student body than in the past. The Boat Club was not as active as in other years but has embarked upon a plan to change the rigging on the fleet of College dinghies with a view to greater safety. �Selective Service The new regulations of the Selective Service System have imposed a heavy burden upon the Dean's office. St. John's was designated as one of the twelve hundred colleges at which the aptitude of students from all over the country was tested in May and June. A large number of outside students took these tests along with our own students. In actual practice, local boards seem to consider both test scores and the academic standing of students in determining deferments. This is not in accordance with the various pronouncements of the Selective Service, which indicated that def erability would be determined upon the basis either of certified academic standing or of test scores. The result is that it is actually the colleges which, in certifying the academic rank of students, are providing local draft boards with decisive data for the deferment or non-deferment of students. In the case of St. John's, this poses a real problem, for the mechanical computing of grades and arranging of students in some kind of order of achievement is contrary to our ways and places the College in a difficult position. The Library During the year the Library has operated successfully with extra student assistants instead of a replacement for Mrs. Simon P. Fullinwider, Jr., whose resignation was accepted with regret in August to permit her to accept a position in the Library of the United States Naval Academy. Per capita circulation of books continued high-twenty-seven as compared to thirty-one in 1949-50, twenty-eight in 1948-49 and twenty-four in 1947-48. The Librarian reports that an examination of the Library for obsolete and unnecessary books was completed, and that lamination of some of the older library archives was begun in cooperation with the Maryland Hall of Records. Forty books of the Thomas Bray collection were also catalogued during the year. Considerable interest was developed in cooperation with the student shops in the field of bookbinding. The College this year bound all of its own magazines for the first time. The Infirmary The plan to integrate the College Physician into the faculty worked well. Dr. Frank Shipley discharged his medical duties in good fashion and also participated in one of the freshman seminars. Miss Elizabeth S. Hopkins, RN, maintained the infirmary at its usual operating efficiency. �There were 53 students admitted as bed patients during the year, while students, faculty members, staff and employees received a total of 181 , 217 treatments in the dispensary. 1 Administration In addition to personnel changes mentioned elsewhere in this report, it should be noted that Mr. Archibald B. McCourt was reappointed Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds following the resignation of Mr. Charles F. Horton in October. George Van Sant, of the Class of 1947, who h~d effectively managed th~ combined_ operations of the Book Store and Pnnt Shop, was called up 111 the Manne Reserves in October and was replaced by Clarence J. Kramer, of the Class of 1948. Mrs. Marie Johnson replaced Mrs. Faye Bartell as Housekeeper, and Mrs. Aleitha Janos was employed as a varitype operator. Miss Hallie Rich served temporarily as secretary to the Assistant to the President and was succeeded in November by Miss Ann D. Hill. Mr. Joseph Smith, Machinist, took over the supervision of the student shops in addition to his other duties. · Staff regulations supplementing those originally instituted for administrative and office assistants were drawn up for buildings and grounds personnel, kitchen staff, maids and others not previously covered. The College came under the provisions of the Social Security Act January 1, 1951, for all persons on its faculty and staff. An annuity plan with the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, and a collective decreasing group life insurance plan were also put into operation for faculty members. New equipment installed during the year included a deep freeze room in the kitchen, the door for which was generously given by J. Vincent Jamison, Jr., of the Class of 1905, and an offset press, a varityper and a folding machine, all of which were purchased from a fund established by an anonymous donor. A new fire alarm system was installed on the campus and certain fire hazards corrected during the year. The College insurance was completely readjusted to current requirements through the active cooperation of William S. Morsell, Jr., of the Class of 1922 and William B. Athey, of the Class of 1932. Some savings were made on the budget during the past year. For example, the College switchboard was eliminated and direct outside lines installed with considerable saving to the College. Such savings, however, were not sufficient to offset the decrease in enrollment. The College therefore ended the fiscal year with ~ deficit of approximately $300. �Its cash position was poor because 0£ the continuing obligation to retire $15,000 worth of outstanding Mortgage Certificates annually. The Finance Committee of the Board in cooperation with the Treasurer of the College have done much to strengthen the financial position of the College. Investment income has been increased appreciably by the purchase of corporate bonds and preferred and common stocks in lieu of retaining all of the College's holdings in United States Savings Bonds. A planned program for further investment will produce a progressively larger income from this source. Admissions Louis Graff resigned at the end of the College year to study law, after having served capably as Director of Admissions at St. John's College for two and one-half years. During this period he visited over two hundred preparatory and high schools and collected names of approximately two thousand prospective students. He also established contact with certain professional school agencies and sought to promote the cooperation of alumni in the matter of procurement. In his final report, Mr. Graff concludes that the general public, while expressing a keen interest in the St. John's Program, cannot be expected to lend full support to the College. The very unorthodoxy of the curriculum makes headmasters and high school principals loath to recommend St. John's to their students, even though they themselves may express great enthusiasm and vicarious interest in the Program. Among the definite objections which students and teachers alike have expressed to Mr. Graff are the following: ( 1) Lack of accreditation-In general it is not sufficient to tell prospects that the College has successfully placed its students in graduate schools. The fact that the Middle States Association has not seen fit to put its stamp of approval upon St. John's somehow magnifies the doubts raised by the unconventionality of the Program. (In this connection, I should like to point out that the College has already applied for accreditation and that a survey committee from the Middle States Association for Colleges and Secondary Schools will visit the campus early in 1952.) ( 2) The exclusive athletic pro gram-Mr. Graff feels that some students may be discouraged from applying for admission because of the absence of competitive intercollegiate athletics at St. John's College. He points to the strong sentiment and color which the American · playing �t Id holds for the average boy. On the other hand, he suggests that 6 e is little likelihood that students would come to the College for ~~~r sake of athletics. The answer to this may be a more rigorous intraral program than the College now has and perhaps, eventually, ~;ited informal athletic meetings with nearby colleges in certain minor sports congenial to the Program. ( 3 ) The P'Yo g~am-Four ~ears of required .mathema~ics. and laboratory science constitute a considerable obstacle m the thmkmg of many condary school graduates. Moreover, the urge of the elective system ~: strong, for the whole climate of opinion in this country stresses the ~raining of speci~lists and .technicians for particular jobs. St. Joh.n's College, in effect, is thus tellmg people what is good for them and askmg them to trust the College for four years that they may emerge as truly educated men. Perhaps the best answer to this criticism will be the accumulating mass of evidence as to the success of the younger St. John's alumni. There is also perceptible in the fields of graduate study, business and government a movement to favor the more broadly educated indi~idual whose general intellectual skills surpass those of the technician and specialist and who is thus in a position to grasp the fundamentals and to understand all facets of a problem. During the spring I had occasion to visit forty-five high schools and private secondary schools in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, California, Utah, and Colorado. In a number of instances I addressed student assemblies; in other cases I talked with headmasters, principals, guidance counsellors, or individual students. Widespread latent interest was apparent, and yet it was evident that it would take more than occasional visits or literature to start even a modest flow of students to St. John's. I was told on a number of occasions that adequate scholarship assistance would guarantee one or two good students from a particular school each year. I believe that the mission of St. John's College is to publicize more widely the opportunities which exist here and to further this type of education in other colleges in the country. I should propose that a substantial grant of money be sought from one of the foundations to establish scholarships for students from all over the country to come to St. John's and to disseminate as widely as possible through the public and private schools of this country an understanding of the educational philosophy underlying the St. John's Program. The very novelty of the Program created a certain amount of interest in the late 1930's and early 1940's. �The facts of achievement now give an even more solid base for con vincing people of the efficacy of the St. John's idea. Public Relations A. Chesley Wilson, Jr., a member of the Class of 1942, was appointed Assistant to the President in September with responsibility for publi relations and the Adult Education Program. Mr. Wilson was able to accomplish a great deal for the College prior to being called up in the Naval Reserve in mid-April. Since his departure, Miss Ann Hill, secretary to Mr. Wilson, has continued to issue publicity releases about College events. During the year a wide variety of stories were prepared and released to the newspapers, particularly in connection with my inauguration and the decision of the College to become co-educational. A number of television and radio broadcasts were arranged with faculty and student participation. 11 • • • About St. John'sn and the quarterly bulletin of the College were sent to an ever-increasing list of friends. Brochures were also prepared on adult education, student procurement, the proposed summer school, and the financial campaign. On the western trip which Mrs. Weigle and I made during the spring I made a point of speaking as widely as possible about the College. I found that the leaders of Great Books seminars were particularly interested in learning the details of the St. John's curriculum and in contrasting their seminar methods and readings with ours. Many new friends were gained for the College at such meetings in St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Houston, San Antonio, La Jolla, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver. Alumni meetings, appearance before service clubs, and newspaper interviews also contributed in these and other cities to a wider public understanding of what St. John's College is doing. The basic problem in connection with any public relations program for St. John's College is to effect a presentation which is dignified and in consonance with the Program itself. There is also the problem of presenting material which will be attractive and of interest to varying groups in the College's constituency. Adult Education Nine adult seminars were conducted during the year; three each in �Annapolis and Baltimore and one each in Easton, Hagerstown and Washington. One. hundr~d and sixty-one participated during the first t rm and eighty-nme durmg the second. Following Mr. Wilson's deearture on military leave, John S. Kieffer was appointed Director of ~dult Education. His plan to conduct a summer session at the College had to be aba.ndoned b~cause. of the latene~s of the announcement, but consideration 1s now bemg given to expanding the Adult Program next year with additional seminars in Frederick, Leonardtown and Cambridge. Alumni Edward F. Lathrop, of the Class of 1938, relinquished his duties as Alumni Secretary in December when he was granted military leave from the College for active service in the United States Navy. His place was filled on a volunteer basis by R. Cresap Davis, of the Class of 1938, who has given freely of his time and energies notwithstanding commitments to an active law practice. With the vigorous leadership of Elmer M. Jackson, Jr., of the Class of 1927, as President of the Alumni Association and the persistent efforts of Mrs. Rosalind Merriken in the Alumni Office, the list of known alumni of the College has now increased to over 1,500 as compared with less than 1,200 a year ago. It is planned to publish an alumni directory as one of the regular bulletins of the College during the coming year. The last such compilation was issued in 1922. A large group of alumni returned for Homecoming in the fall, which coincided with my inauguration. Others met with me during the year for dinners or other gatherings in Baltimore, Washington, New Haven, Chicago, Houston, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Oakland. New chapters of the Association have been chartered in California and in Washington, D. C. Building Program In my report of a year ago I announced the generous gift of a new heating plant from the Old Dominion Foundation. I am happy to report excellent progress on construction, with occupancy promised for late September. The new building is of Georgian Colonial architecture to conform to the rest of the campus, and is located on St. John's Street immediately northwest. of the temporary defense shops building. It is designed to provide steam from two oil-fired boilers with sufficient �capacity to care for a twenty-five percent differential beyond all presently planned campus expansion. One wing of the new building will house the buildings and grounds office, shops, and vehicles; the other w ill contain student shops, a switch room, and facilities for buildings and grounds personnel. It is believed that dependable heat and hot water will contribute in no small measure to the general well-being of the College community during the now distant rigors of future Annapolis winters. Preliminary plans have now been drawn for a science laboratory building, an auditorium, a women's dormitory, and a larger dining h all as an addition to Randall Hall. The Old Dominion Foundation _h as offered to match funds contributed for the construction of one of these buildings up to a total of $250,000. It is my hope that some friend of the College will make possibe the erection of the women's dormitory on the site of the old heating plant prior to the start of .the academic year in 195 3. In this connection I should also like to report completion of a master plan for campus development, drawn up by the F. Ellwood Allen Organization of New York City. Financial Campaign At Homecoming last fall I announced the start of a long-term campaign to provide adequate endowment fund s for the College. I told at that time of the generous commitment of the Old D ominion Foundation to match dollar for dollar all monies contributed for endowment purposes prior to June 30, 1953, up to a total of $1,000,000. To date fundraising efforts of the College have been confined to members of the Board and to alumni. I am happy to announce that a total of $77,709. had been pledged through June 30, 1951. Of this figure, alumni gifts totaled $41,000., including amounts previously contributed during the annual giving campaigns of 1948-49 and 1949-50, which the Foundation has agreed to match. Cash totaling $29,238. actually received prior to June 30, 1951, has already been matched by the Foundation and invested by the Finance Committee of the Board. This brings the total endowment funds of the College to approximately $300,000. It is planned to press forward with the alumni phase of the campaign during September and October and then to broaden the campaign during the winter. Approaches are likewise being made to ct::rtain foundations . * * * �I am anxious that St. John's College continue to concern itself with the Republic. Our primary task is of course the education of young men and young women in the liberal arts to become leaders in our Republic. Beyond that, however, we have a missionary function to perform in convincing others of the validity of the St. John's idea for assuring the future of the Republic. This is accomplished in part by receiving delegations and individual visitors from other colleges, in part by writing articles and disseminating printed material about the Program, and in part by the daily conversations and contacts of St. John's faculty, students and alumni with others. The College must be concerned with the smaller Republics of the state and city in which it exists. To this end I have sought to make available to townspeople and citizens of the state College concerts, lectures, library services, and the physical facilities of the campus. I have encouraged members of the College to concern themselves with community activities. For my own part I have accepted appointments by the Governor to the Citizens Advisory Committee of the Commission on Administrative Organization in the State, and to the Board of Education of Anne Arundel County. I look forward to the day when the College can contribute to the intellectual development and refreshment of the school teachers of the State through summer seminars on the College campus. It is the responsibility of the College to awaken in its students a sense of civic responsibility and service to the Republic, which will prompt the members of each graduating class to carry on this finest tradition of the College. I appreciate deeply the cooperation and support I have had from members of the Board, from members of the College community, and from alumni and friends. I believe we should face the future with confidence and encouragement, for I am convinced that the College will move ahead in spite of the transitory obstacles created by war and inflation. RICHARD D. WEIGLE Annapolis, Maryland August 3, 1951 �GIFTS AND BEQUESTS St. John's College is a non-governmental, non-sectarian college deriving its income from students fees, from a limited appropriation by the Maryland General Assembly, and from the gifts of its friends and alumni. The type of education for which St. John's stands is exceedingly expensive and it is impossible to establish student fees commensurate with the overall cost. The gap between income and expenses exceeds $150,000, which the College hopes some day to provide for through a substantial permanent endowment. All planning for the future has been based upon the conviction that the College enrollment should not exceed 300 students. To provide an adequate physical plant for this student body, new buildings will be required as well as renovations to existing structures. The College invites gifts and bequests to its current budget, its building program, and its permanent endowment funds. Inquires may be addressed to the President or the Treasurer. Bequests may be made in form similar to the following: "I hereby give and bequeath to the Visitors and Governors of St. John's College in the State of Maryland, an educational corporation existing by Charter of the General Assembly of the State of Maryland and situated in Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, in said State, the sum of dollars." If bequests are made for specific purposes, such can be fully stated. Attention is invited to the fact that Federal and State income tax deductions resulting from such gifts may mean a cost to the donor of only a fraction of the value of the gift to the College. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 18 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bulletin of St. John's College in Annapolis, September 1951 Description An account of the resource Volume III, No. 3 of the Bulletin of St. John's College in Annapolis, "Report of the President." Published in September 1951. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1951-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bulletin_volIII_no3_1951_September President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/64b2006d90d62ee484b774e2d44fe5d2.pdf 902af80826a32bc2c75d9e68451467cd PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplementary Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND JULY, 1943 Founded as King William's School, 1696 Chartered as St. John's College, 1874 �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplementary Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND JULY, 1943 Founded as King William's School, 1696 Chartered as St. John's College, 1874 �BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS THOMAS PARRAN, ]R., Chairman STRINGFELLOW BARR M. Ro BERT RICHARD F. CLEVELAND, CLARENCE AMOS F. HUTCHINS EDWIN wARFIELD, JR. PAULL. BANFIELD ROBERT '. Vice-Chairman Secretary FRANCIS PICKENS MILLER, 0. BONNELL HUTCHINS w. STRYKER HAROLD F. LINDER ScoTT BucHANAN HERVEY ALLEN WILLIAM J. FRENCH �REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS: The most urgent problems which St. John's College has faced during the past year are of course, as in the case of all American colleges, the problems posed by war. The most important adjustments to the War which St. John's has made have been to furnish instruction for four terms a year instead of three and to admit students from the second year of high schoo!. The addition of a summer term is of course purely a War measure. Temporarily, it means that the next academic "session" of three terms will begin on July 8th instead of in September. The change in requirements for admission, most members of the Board will recall, has been on the College agenda since 193 7, when the College introduced the St. John's Program. I am taking the liberty of recalling this fact to the minds of Board members because I think it worth recording, at the end of the first six 'years of the St. John's Program, that the College has now taken the last major step which could be predicted, six years ago. While the admission of younger students may well prove the least important of these steps, it is not without interest as a milestone and it is not without considerable practical importance if the College is to render to the community the highest possible degree of service. It would seem desirable to record briefly the series of steps that brought us to the point we have now reached. First, the Board of Visitors and Governors, convinced that a drastic reform in American undergraduate education was overdue, took council and decided on the main lines which that reform might best follow. I believe it is important to recall that the Board had the daring to postpone dealing with the College's grave financial problems until they had dealt first with the nature and aims of genuine liberal education. Once they had determined upon their purpose and upon the type of curriculum that could achieve their purpose, they showed even more unusual daring. They authorized a major educational reform of the College with no money in sight to carry it out. When the reform had been effected, they and the College administration then sought and found men and women who would help financially. None of these men and women, in my judg1 �ment, would have underwritten such a reform in advance either at St. John's or at any other college. It was because the College chose to risk its very existence, in order to achieve its proper purpose, that it found faith and support. Remembering those anxious early years, members of the Board may find a nostalgic interest in the recently published Report from the Committee on the Re-Statement of the Nature and Aims of Liberal Education to the Commission on Liberal Education of the Association of American Colleges. Having agreed on the proper educational aims of the College, and the broad lines of the curriculum that could achieve such aims, the Board chose a new administration which would be responsible for working out with the faculty the actual teaching practice of the College. So far as the administration's mandate would permit, the existing faculty was utilized. It was obvious that we who would do the daily teaching of the College would have in large measure the arduous task of re-educating ourselves. For we were ourselves the products of the very system whose breakdown had brought us together in this enterprise. It is doubtful whether any other faculty in this country can have worked as ours has had to during these past six years. Moreover, for the first half of that period the College could offer none of us financial security a month ahead. But we early discovered the exhilaration and workmanlike satisfaction that inhered in the curriculum we had determined to teach, and by the end of the first five-year period the College faculty had attained a strength that nobody could have predicted in 193 7. Meanwhile, the Board had completely reorganized itself in the light of the educational purpose of the College and achieved approximately its present membership. The College then set to work to shoulder the mortgage on its property which the present administration had inherited, in addition to meeting the deficits which its reorganization would inevitably impose upon it during the period of transition. The mortgage was reorganized in such fashion as to provide full repayment to the creditors of the College while giving the College sufficient time to find the means for annual amortization. But the College's material needs did not stop with inherited cash debts. The physical plant was in desperate need of repair and improvement. However, finding money for these purposes proved, quite naturally, much easier than finding money for inherited debt; and much was accomplished before wartime shortages postponed resumption of our building program. All the tasks thus far listed were predictable enough in 1937. But two major internal reforms were not foreseen and yet have proven 2 �of great significance to the College community. By the beginning of its second year, the curriculum met in head-on collision with the existing system of intercollegiate athletics. After all, intercollegiate athletics, as conducted just before the present War, had grown up during a period when the American undergraduate curriculum was in rapid decay. Indeed, there is a quite genuine sense in which it had arisen in order to fill a growing vacuum. The hardest solution of the problem seemed to be the only real solution: the College abolished intercollegiate competition and was richly rewarded by the extraordinary development of its intramural sports. Members of the Board have doubtless been reading predictions that, following this War, our colleges will not willingly restore the incubus of intercollegiate athletics as our generation came to know it. They may readily underestimate now the anger and mystification which St. John's caused in 1939 by making a clean break with the whole impossible business and developing an athletic system of its own that would fortify, instead of disrupting and confusing, the College's educational function. The second internal reform which none of us foresaw was the shift from a social system dominated by national fraternities to one in which the entire student body, which is socially, economically, geographically, religiously, and even intellectually an unusually heterogeneous group, has been welded by common study and play into something very much resembling one fraternity. Incidentally, it is a "fraternity" which would welcome chapters on other college campuses! It was in the light of these successive reforms that the College faced last winter the new problems posed by the War. Its faculty had lost some of its ablest members to the armed forces, to government administration, or to war research. The drafting of men of eighteen would mean that few of its students would return next session. Indeed, half of them were already in the armed forces, under orders to continue at college until called out. From one end of the country to the other, discussion raged as to whether liberal education for men must be suspended for the duration of the War. The College faced three possibilities, as perhaps every other men's college m America did. First, it could apply for a contract with the Army or Navy to teach technical courses. None of the faculty was interested in this alternative, although the nature of the St. John's curriculum meant that perhaps no other liberal arts faculty in the country contained so large a proportion of experienced teachers in mathematics and physics. The simple fact was that the armed forces were being 3 �besieged by colleges which saw in war contracts their one means of financial survival. Given that state of affairs, the faculty of St. John's felt there would be many other and more useful ways of helping the war effort. Secondly, St. John's could suspend instruction until peace had been won and its faculty and students could again assemble and resume where they had left off. This would have worked a hardship on very few students and would in my judgment have been a defensible move. But the difficulties of reassembling a specially trained faculty at the perhaps indeterminate "end" of a global war cast doubt on the wisdom of the proposal. There remained only one alternative. In December 1942, the faculty by unanimous action decided in effect that their duty lay in continuing their work during those years of their students' lives immediately preceding military service. The Board will recall that they had already had teaching experience with younger students. It was evident that from the point of view of liberal education, the graduate of the average high school was not sufficiently better prepared than the lad with only two years of high school to make the shift imprudent, and in many cases there had been recognizable deterioration within the last two years. Members of the Board will recall that the Board's action in January, in ratifying this decision by the faculty, was likewise unanimous; and they may likewise recall the two principal reasons advanced in debate. First, it was pointed out that if we were justified in the daring steps we took in 1937, from a conviction that the American college of liberal arts was no longer meeting its obligations and that it badly needed to re-state the nature and aims of liberal education, surely it was even more necessary to stick to the job now, when leaders throughout the country were recognizing that liberal education for young men was in effect suspended, and that this suspension endangered the postwar period. Secondly, it was pointed out that both the Army and Navy were complaining bitterly of the lack in college graduates of disciplines which St. John's was furnishing in eminent degree, and that the College therefore owed it to the war effort to give this type of training to as many young men as it could handle. St. John's has not been alone in urging that the American school and college system be permanently shortened and strengthened. The President of Fordham University has argued cogently for six years of grammar school, three years of high school, and three years of college, although he doubtless assumes that this time would be spent in genuine studies and not in wandering through the mazes of the 4 �elective system, both in college and high school. We who teach at St. John's heartily wish that other colleges would boldly take lads young enough for them to get a liberal education before military service; that they would do so, not hesitantly, shamefacedly, and in view of various personal circumstances, but in order that the colleges might meet their responsibilities to our country in an hour of great need. Obviously, this would "lessen entrance requirements," at least as to time served in classrooms; and precisely to that extent it would "lower standards." In actual practice it could of course infinitely raise the educational standards of the American people. If the liberal arts colleges of this country could not teach more in the same space of time than is now learned in the last two years of the American high school, then our colleges are in worse shape than even their severest critics suppose. We wish other colleges would face this grave national problem. We even believe with the President of Fordham that they might indeed learn consistently to graduate men younger than they now do, and we believe that they might collaborate with the schools to do a better job in less time. But our experience of the past six years suggests that they would need to do one thing first. They would have to re-define their educational purpose. Fortunately, there are at the moment hundreds of academic committees throughout the country striving to do just that. The elective system that has grown up in our country during the past decades will not support the shift. It has inevitably bred a country-club atmosphere and innumerable "college activities" to fill the vacuum it leaves and it is not an atmosphere into which responsible parents should want to introduce younger students-or perhaps any students. If our colleges would assume the task of educating boys before military service, they would , first have to construct again a curriculum that could occupy such a boy's time and attention, a curriculum that could challeng~ his capacities and develop his sense of responsibility. I invite the Board's vigilant attention during the coming years to one important -consequence of the earlier matriculation. It was with this consequence in mind that the College planned in 1937 to make the shift "some day," six years before the brutal necessities of war defined that phrase practically. It is this: the College's present entrance requirements substitute two years of solid study, in such subjects as language and mathematics, for four years of wandering in a diluted and padded curriculum. This should bring us better prepared students, less confused by what are known at St. John's 5 �as "high school habits." And better prepared students will demand better teaching. For decades now the professor who teaches undergraduates has fallen back on two alibis for the meager results he has usually achieved. First, he does not admit responsibility for the student's general intellectual growth, since he is concerned only with knowledge in a given "field." Secondly, the professor truthfully reports that not much can be done anyhow with the graduate of the average secondary school: he is not prepared for college work. In 193 7, by abolishing the elective system, we teachers at St. John's surrendered the first alibi; and to that surrender I should ascribe much of the teaching strength the College has developed. In the process, the faculty have rid themselves of an intellectual agoraphobia that has made it increasingly difficult in our times to teach the liberal arts. In the pursuit of ideas, no teacher at St. John's can decline a hurdle on the grounds that it would take him out of his field. This has proven important. The men who wrote the great books which our students read did not dwell in fields. In short, better subject matter has challenged our capacities as teachers, not only to teach but to learn. Now more relevantly prepared students will challenge those capacities again. We have said what we want our students to understand before they come to us. We have qiscouraged their wasting and misusing time in irrelevant preparation. By defining their responsibilities more clearly, we have again defined our own more clearly. We know from daily experience that to define a teaching responsibility is a most important first step towards meeting it. Since we are determined to meet ours, we believe that earlier matriculation may carry even more important consequences than salvaging liberal education from the blackout of a total war. STRINGFELLOW BARR Annapolis, Maryland, July, 1943. 6 �A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES ON THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM EDUCATION BY BooKs, by Mark Van Doren, The Nation, December 6. 1933. ST. JoHN's REVIVAL, Time Magazine, July 19, 1937. EXPERIMENT, by Charter Heslep, Washington Daily News, July 28, 1937. A CoLLEGE EDUCATION FROM 117 BooKs, by· Louis M. Lyons, The Boston Sunday Globe, September 13, 1937. BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS IN EDUCATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Talks, October, 1937. Reported from an address given over the Columbia Broadcasting System. EDUCATION BY "BooK LEARNING," by Thomas R. Henry, The Washington Star, December 5, 1937. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING, by W. A. P. Martin, The Commonweal, December 31, 1937. A CRISIS IN LIBERAL EDUCATION, by Scott Buchanan, The Amherst Graduates' Quarterly, February, 1938. Reprints available. CONCERNING THE NEW PROGRAM AT ST. JoHN's, by R. Catesby Taliaferro, The Maryland Club Woman, February, 1938. THE ST. JoHN's COLLEGE PROGRAM, by Richard F. Cleveland, The Daily Record, Baltimore, Md., March 23, 1938. ST. JoHN's ExPERIMENT TO RECLAIM A LosT HERITAGE, by George Bull, S. J., America, April 23, 1938. ARISTOTLE IN ANNAPOLIS, by Donald Slesinger, Survey Graphic, June, 1938. A COLLEGE REBELS, by Stringfellow Barr, The Key Reporter, Phi .Beta Kappa News Magazine, Autumn, 1938. BACK To THE CLASSICS, by Philip S. Marden, The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, October, 1938. ALL QurnT AT ST. JoHN's, by Francis Beirne, "Our Educational Correspondent,'' The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 4, 1938. THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, by Stringfellow Barr, The Virginia Spectator, December, 1938. THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, in Today and Tomorrow, by Walter Lippmann, appearing in 165 newspapers. December 27, 1938. Reprints available. JoHN DoE GoEs TO ST. JoHN's, by Stringfellow Barr, Progressive Education, January, 1939. Reprints available. FROM ST. JoHN's TO MARK HOPKINS, by C. J. Wilgus, The Journal of Higher Education, January, 1939. EDUCATORS STRIVE FOR "FREE MIND,'' by Hedley Donovan, The 'Washington Post, January 15, 1939. A Series of Four Articles on The St. John's Program by Lee McCardell, The Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23, 24, 25, and 26, 1939. THE CRISIS IN CoNTEMPORARY EDUCATION, by Mortimer J. Adler, The Social Frontier, February, 1939. HUTCHINS OF CHICAGO, Part I, "The Daring Young Man,'' and Part II, "The Flying Trapeze,'' by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, March and April, 1939. 7 �REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT: Supplement to the Bulletin, by Stringfellow Barr, April, 1939. Reprints available. SocRATES CROSSES THE DELAWARE: St. John's College and the Great Books, by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, June, 1939. Reprints available. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION, by Dorothy Thompson, Ladies' Home Journal, August, 1939. THE ART OF LIBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Free America, September and October, 1939. Reprints available. BACK To FrnsT PRINCIPLES, by Scott Buchanan, Survey Graphic, October, 1939. TowARDS A D1sc1PLINED MIND, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Head Mistresses Association of the East, November 10-11, 1939. THE ENDS AND MEANS OF GENERAL EDUCATION, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Fifty-Third Annual Convention of the Middle States Ass'n of Colleges and Secondary Schools, November 24-25, 1939. Reprints available. THE TRAINING OF A FREE MIND, by Stringfellow Barr, Catholic Digest (Condensed from Fre e America), December, 1939. THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL AT ST. JoHN's, by John S. Kieffer, The Classical Journal, December, 1939. How CAN WE BE TAUGHT To THINK, L "Back to First Principles," by Scott Buchanan, in Democracy's Challenge to Education, Farrar & Rinehart, 1940. A PLAN FOR AMERICA, by E. B. White, Harpers Magazine, February, 1940, pages 331-332. THE CLASSICS: At St. John's They Come Into Their Own Once More, Life Magazine, February 5, 1940. REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT: Supplement to the Bulletin, by Stringfellow Barr, April, 1940. Reprints available. A CoLLEGE IN SECESSION, by Stringfellow Barr, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1941. Reprints available. How CAN OuR SCHOOLS MEET THE WAR EMERGENCY? Radio Debate, Town Meeting of the Air Program, January, 1942, between Wm. F. Russell, Stringfellow Barr, James B. Edmonson. Reprints available. THE WAR AND THE CoLLEGES: Two Radio Addresses, by Stringfellow Barr, May, 1942. Reprints available. REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT: Supplement to the Bulletin, by Stringfellow Barr, July, 1942. Reprints available. THE ROLE OF THE COLLEGE IN AMERICAN LIFE, by Scott Buchanan, Learning and Living, November, 1942. How CAN EDUCATION KEEP PACE WITH WAR NEEDS? Radio debate on Town Meeting of the Air Program, November, 1943, between John W. Studebaker, Stringfellow Barr, and Mary B. Gilson. Reprints available. SusPENDING EDUCATION, Radio address by Stringfellow Barr, February 4, 1943. Copies available. CRISIS AND REFORM IN EDUCATION, by Walter Lippmann, New York Herald-Tribune, February 14, 1943. CLICK AND PICK vs. THE ATLANTIC, by James Harry Price, The Churchman, Christmas, 1942. THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, by Stringfellow Barr, Swedish Encyclopedia of Education, Spring, 1943. THE ST. ]oHN's PROGRAM, by Stringfellow Barr, Encyclopedia of Modern Education, Spring, 1943. Two YEARS OF HIGH ScHooL, THEN CoLLEGE, by Stringfellow Barr, Secondary Education, April, 1943. 1 8 �THE COLLEGE OF THE FUTURE, by Stringfellow Barr, New York Times, Magazine Section, May 8, 1943. CLAssrcs OF THE WESTERN WoRLD, with forewords by John Erskine and Everett Dean Martin, American Library Association, 1934. One of the book lists out of which the St. John's Program grew, this pamphlet contains valuable secondary bibliographical material. It was first published in 1927 by the American Library Association for the use of adult classes. How TO READ A BooK OR THE ART OF GETTING A LIBERAL EDUCATION. By Mortimer J. Adler, Simon & Schuster, 1940. A book expounding the techniques by which adult groups or individuals can come to terms with the great books. How TO READ A PAGE, by I. A. Richards, W. W. Norton, 1942. Still more detailed techniques of reading. 9 �Copies of this Report may be had on request. Address: The Registrar, St. John's College. Annapolis, Maryland. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 14 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Supplementary Bulletin, St. John's College, July 1943 Description An account of the resource Supplementary Bulletin, St. John's College, "Report of the President." Published in July 1943. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SupplementaryBulletin_1943_July President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/558694b58c19aa8951802e0971d3ebcf.pdf e6892bf33f5bc09c0f81267d7337f56e PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplementary Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND JULY, 1942 Founded as King WiIJiam's School, 1696 Chartered as St. John's College, 1784 �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplementary Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND JULY, 1942 Founded as King William's School, 1696 Chartered as St. John's College, 1784 �BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS THOMAS PARRAN, ]R., Chairman Vice-Chairman Secretary ROBERT M. HUTCHINS w. FRANCIS PICKENS MILLER, CLARENCE RICHARD F. CLEVELAND, CoLBY M. CHESTER F. STRYKER AMOS F. HUTCHINS HAROLD EDWIN ScoTT BucHANAN wARFIELD, JR. BEARDSLEY PAULL. BANFIELD ROBERT 0. LINDER R UML HERVEY ALLEN BONNELL WILLIAM J. FRENCH STRINGFELLOW BARR HENRY F. STURDY �REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Five years have passed since St. John's College introduced its present program of instruction. During that time much has been said and written about the College's radical reform. Some of what has been said has exhibited extraordinary insight, both into the St. John's Program and into the state of liberal learning in America today. Inevitably also, much has been said which was simply misinformation about St. John's College, yet has been unconsciously revealing of American opinion concerning liberal education. It would seem proper to lay before the Visitors and Governors in some systematic form the principal misapprehensions concerning the College's purpose and the means it has adopted to carry out that purpose, both because they are the natural interpreters of the College to the outside world and should know the points which most need interpretation, and also because one may well record, at the end of these five years, what the comments of that world have been upon the assumption of a task which American colleges had for decades refused to assume. The history of the College for the past five years has acted as a catalytic upon the confusions implicit in contemporary liberal education, has indeed made more explicit, confusions which every college trustee might well consider. There have been two main classes of misapprehensions. On the one hand "conservative" educators have argued for the "tradit ional" elective system in our undergraduate colleges against the " novel educational experiment" which St. John's supposedly started. St. John's had restored a kind of education that has more than two thousand years of teaching experience back of it compared with the elective system's century or less. The liberal educators, on the other hand, welcome what they call novel experiments and took the St. John's Program to be one. In general, the conservatives have found in the St. John's curriculum all the things they fear, and the liberals all the things they always hoped for and never found elsewhere. The conservatives have feared an intellectual coup d'etat under papist auspices . Was the College not requiring students to read St. Augustine, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas? And were not these theologians Catholics- at a time, it is true, when the choice of Protestant churches was lamentably restricted? Were they not dog- �with those three questions in mind: Whom is the St. John's Program for? What does it do for them? What chance has it of surviving? "Only the brilliant student need apply to St. John's for admission, and in any case only he would profit by studying there if admitted." As a matter of fact the Dean of the College has through~ out the five years, and as a matter of educational policy, admitted freshman classes that exhibited what educators often call a bell curve. That is, he has admitted a few freshmen who had averaged "A" in high school, a few who had averaged "D", and a goodly . proportion of "B's" and "C's." For the first five years the entrance requirements the College had for a long time been using, fifteen high school "units" and the principal's recommendation, were continued, not because the Dean attached much importance to them but because he did not wish to recommend more appropriate requirements until the faculty had had enough experience teaching the Program to draw them up wisely. This year the War precipitated action that might otherwise have been postponed for two or three years longer: the faculty substituted for a high school diploma its own entrance examinations, examinations designed to insure as far as possible that the incoming freshman had the relevant preparation while at the same time enabling him to enter the College early enough to graduate by twenty. Although the military draft precipitated this action, there is reason to hope that the College will feel justified in continuing to graduate its students by twenty, even after peace comes. Certainly an efficient system of school and college should accomplish more for a student by that age than the present system achieves by a considerably later age. The Visitors and Governors will doubtless recall that the new entrance examinations cover algebra through quadratics, plane geometry, one foreign language and-what innumerable college matriculants and some graduates from our better colleges no longer possess-common school arithmetic and English grammar. A boy who understands those subjects should profit by studying at St. John's. There is, however, one requirement which the bulk of matricu-, lants in our colleges do not meet: the boy that enters St. J ohn'S\ must desire a liberal education seriously enough tQ face tasks he did not choose and to work harder upon them than he would need to work if his only desire were to secure a bachelor's degree from a leading American university. This last requirement keeps more boys from 1 1 applying to St. John's than anything except misinformation about it, or misinformation about liberal education. But mediocre abilities have not barred applicants. 3 �"Only students with private incomes should enter St. John's since the College does not prepare boys to earn a living." Almost none of the present student body now have, or may expect to have, private incomes. They did not of course come to St. John's to prepare for a specific job. St. John's is not a business school, not a professional school. It is concerned to awaken and discipline and render genuinely usable the intellectual powers of its students. It assumes that many of them will upon graduation enter a business occupation, in which case they will learn the job from those already on the job. This is the way most bachelors of arts in the United States, who earn bread today, learned their jobs, not by taking "practical" college courses. In fact, alumni surveys indicate that few undergraduates "major" in the field in which they later earn their living, for the adequate reason that life is much more surprising than most colleges realize, and the average undergraduate cannot predict how he will eventually earn his living. In short, most persons still learn their business ·the way their great-grandfathers did, by the method formerly known as apprenticeship. Tho~e who have first learned to think make the aptest apprentices. However, certain of the learned professions, theology, medicine, law, engineering, and others, require of their apprentices that they first get specialized theoretical training, usually though not invariably in a school. Some of the best of these professional schools require of those who enter them a bachelor's degree, in an effort to guarantee that those who study for a profession shall first be educated men. They are usually disappointed in their guarantee and are loud in saying so to the liberal arts colleges. The graduates of St. John's go to professional schools just like other college graduates, except that they have learned first to handle more difficult problems than the elective system requires students to handle. The medical schools offer a special problem, since, despairing of getting educated B.A.'s from the colleges, they have passed over to the colleges, under the term "pre-medical course," some of the professional training which medicine requires. The graduates of St. John's are entering good medical schools. Certain graduate departments in our universities, notably chemistry, do not insist on a liberal education but do insist on several years of undergraduate chemistry. No college could hope both to assume this professional responsibility and give its students a thorough liberal education, and St. John's does not try. It has never tried to "meet requirements" but to give a solid education, .and really good graduate and professional schools are but too glad to get what they originally hoped the colleges could give. 4 �The "practical" benefit of a liberal education is to enable young men to think clearly and imaginatively, to display versatility and adaptability, and the onlY- known "course" in these valuable qualities is what men once called liberal education. The qualities are still eagerly, if vainly, sought by those in responsible positions with difficult personnel problems. Only recently have many Americans assumed that knowing how to think better would be a handicap in earning a living. "Poor boys need not apply, since there is no student aid, and since St. John's is in any case a community of 'gentlemen' with a high standard of living." There are of course many poor boys at St.John's, earning a part of their education by the usual college jobs and receiving the rest as a free grant. The standard of living is conspicuously simpler than in most well known American colleges. "St. John's teaches no science, only the classics." St. John's is, I assume, the only college of liberal arts in the country that will not grant a degree without four years of laboratory work, three hours a week for freshmen and sophomores, six hours a week for juniors and seniors. It is true that the purpose of this laboratory work is not to train professio_n al chemists or physicists or biologists but tol \ v discipline the student in the kind of thinking that goes on in those_; subjects by working in those subjects. St. John's is concerned, not primarily to teach laboratory rule of thumb but the reasoning back of the rule. It is moreover concerned that students should understand the great v revolutions in scientific thought, whether in ancient Greece, or in contemporary Europe or America. In the last formal lecture he ever delivered, Sir William Osler argued indeed for the value of Greek classics to liberal education but demanded that we study not only those called "humanistic" but the giants of Greek scientific inquiry as well: Democritus and Archimedes, Arista,rchus, Hippocrates, and Galen, and the scientific works of Aristotle. For there are "classics" in science as well as classics in poetry or philosophy. There are books which are classics and there are laboratory instruments which are also classics. "St. John's teaches no modern books, only the Greek and Latin classics." The books used at St. John's are of course the great books of the Western tradition, regardless of time or place. In time they range from Homer to living authors. Fortunately not all the great classics were written by Greeks or Romans. "Are students required to 'believe' Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas?" No, nor Freud, nor Marx either. Students are discour5 �aged from believing or disbelieving books they have not read or do not yet understand. They learn by daily experience how irrelevant this question of believing or accepting or subscribing usually is. Those moderns who accept, or refuse to accept, Aristotle, without knowing what he said, are not in a happy position intellectually, although their ignorance of the nature of their position usually leaves them tranquil. "The abolition of the elective system at St. John's leaves no room for the great specialist, no room for research, without which teaching itself decays." Leaving aside the rather obvious fact that most great specialists in our universities tend to pass on undergraduate teaching to their less distinguished colleagues, it is true that the faculty of St. John's are far too busy learning how to move through the same unspecialized areas of human knowledge through which the authors of the great books moved, to carry on much specialized research in the contemporary academic sense. It is equally true that the research that they do undertake is chiefly concerned with the recovery of understandings which the specialized scholar has now lost. How easily this loss could occur is obvious to anyone who reflects that the greatest minds of the Occident were rarely content to operate. in what a modern research scholar calls his field. Finally, it is worth observing that though modern research has indeed been used as the only available antidote against the bc,~·edom of teaching elective courses to undergraduates, that antidote is not needed by a faculty constantly occupied with the greatest books in all fields which our civilization has produced, and with helping undergraduates to understand them. "Undergraduates cannot read some of the books on the St. John's list." The heavy word in this sentence is the word "read." If it means master, the statement is not only true but a bit obvious. Some of the books on the St. John's list are not in a certain sense mastered by the faculty, nor perhaps by anybody. It is one of the characteristics of William Shakespeare that just when one feels one has really seen all the meanings in a given tragedy, a new implication appears. That is presumably why grown men, even learned men, do not object to reading and rereading Shakespeare. But the other great authors of our civilization exhibit the same inexhaustibility. If "read" means to understand to some degree and with immense intellectual profit, then the books "read" at St. John's are quite genuinely "read." Some of them, like ·Newton's Principia, have to be read in the British university sense: that is, studied line by line and toiled over at the blackboard. But they are read. 6 �The levels of understanding by undergraduates of different capacities vary more widely than the levels of understanding in dealing with a modern textbook. But the different levels increase in depth, and that is the reason for the reading. "Undergraduates cannot read so many books, since whole graduate courses are built around one or two of them." Again it depends on whether a man has read Dante when he knows what he says and can discuss it intelligently, or whether he has read him only after mastering the philological and historical apparatus employed by Dante Clubs. It depends on whether one seeks to become a Dante specialist or whether one uses the experience of reading Dante's poetry as one of the means of increasing a young man's understanding, in short, of educating him. Finally, it is quite probable that the required books at St. John's are less numerous than the books the average American undergraduate reads during the four years it takes him to thread his way through the maze of elective courses. It is more than probable that they are better books and therefore more worth his precious time. "Undergraduates cannot master four languages, yet St. John's requires every undergraduate to study Greek for one year, Latin for one, French for one, German for one. Why not study one long enough to master it?" St. John's is not concerned to turn out Hellenists or Latinists or French scholars or German scholars. It is concerned to acquaint its students with Language. It is concerned that its students should learn to use their mother tongue, in most cases English, with more discrimination and with greater effect than American college alumni now can. For Language is a basic _instrument of human thought. Normally, dull and slovenly language is recording dull and slovenly thinking. Even if the thinking is not dull, dull language cannot adequately convey it to others. This is as true in writing a business letter as in writing a piece of literary criticism. But to study Language in general, it is wise to study a sample language. Foreign languages are better for this purpose than one's own language, because they command a stronger quality of attention. Ancient languages are peculiarly adapted to exhibiting clearly the problems of all Language because they are highly inflected and the joints show. French and German have the advantage of being easier to learn to read directly without translation. Like Greek and Latin, they have the added advantage of being the vehicles of some of the greatest thinking of the Western world. For the end in view at St. John's, the comparisons between the four languages studied are of high pedagogical value. Neverthe7 �less, there is nothing sacred about the number four. Provided the end were kept clearly in view, the same job could be done with two languages or even one. The decision to use four was a purely practical one. "The object of the St. John's Program can be better achieved by a survey course in the intellectual history of the Western world." Not if this means substituting for the products of great minds condensations or commentaries by smaller minds. The American college professor, by the way, has no reason to feel insulted if his mind is considered smaller than the greatest minds whose products have come down to us. His mind can become less small if he associates constantly through his study and reading with minds that are really great. So can the minds of his students. "How can an undergraduate read a great book, say Machiavelli's Prince, without having first been given the background of the book: the Italian Renaissance, a course in painting, or the history of the Italian city states?" It is a modern superstition that a book like the Prince is inaccessible except to those who "have read up on the period." It is accessible to anybody who reads it attentively. Far from requiring a historical background to make good sense, it is one of the documents without which the so-called background makes very little sense indeed. Additional information, shedding light on Machiavelli and sometimes on his work can be multiplied almost indefinitely so long as our larger libraries hold out. But Machiavelli will remain intelligible, alone and unaided, so long as ordinary human experience holds out. Finally, most contemporary attempts to do a "thorough" job on Plato or Rousseau turn out to be based on the professorial assumption-in the context of contemporary education, curiously self-verifying-that no man reads an important book a second time after he has graduated. In so far as the alumnus does not read important books, he is quite simply another expensive educational failure. I am aware that he normally feels he lacks the time and I am equally aware of his frantic efforts to kill the time he could use re-reading the great books he first read in college, if indeed he did. "There is no course in American · history given at St. John's." In fact, in June 1942 the New York Times conducted a survey that disclosed that only eighteen per cent of our colleges require such a course for graduation and only twenty-eight per cent require it for admission. The Times reported that many educators were horrified by this disclosure. St. John's is not. It is horrified by the fact that American liberal arts colleges no longer supply the kind of educa8 �tion that made that history possible. As for the history itself, there are extant many readable versions of it, and there are countless Americans who have learned more about the history of their country from the sort of reading educated men and women do than can be learned in an undergraduate course. In terms of understanding America, it is far more shocking not to have read the Federalist papers than not to recall what happened in McKinley's administration. "St. John's is too intellectual. It is concerned with reading and thinking and talking, but it does not educate the whole man." It happens that colleges can best help the whole man by strengthening his intellect, as hospitals can by healing his body, and restaurants by feeding his stomach. St. John's thinks it important to discriminate between these social functions. It is true that it operates an infirmary and a dining hall, but its central concern is with the minds of its students. It also has a very lively athletic system, although it will have no truck with intercollegiate competition in its present form . It sings, it dances, it boats, it even goes to the movies! But it does these things in order that it may do better the job it was chartered to do: develop the intellectual powers of young men and teach them the means of continuing their development for life. I ts " college life" is organized around its instruction, not vice versa. It is not a club . " St John's is not concerned with 'creative' work or with the fine arts." St. John's is deeply concerned about the fine arts, but it is quite true that it has made really effective educational use of only one of them: music. It would welcome a good solution by which other fine arts might support the libe~al arts. It has not to date found such a solution and it would be quite unwilling to substitute for a genuine solution any schemes that contemporary colleges have to date set up. "St. John's does not cater to individual differences in its students." The College does not believe that young men can afford to focus upon their peculiar aptitudes before getting a basic, sound, general education. Such an education, is the common need of all free men. With it, differences in personality are rendered significant. Without it, such differences become mere eccentricity. Those persons best learn to "express themselves" who learn to express ideas; and they can learn to express ideas by essentially the same method by which children can learn to talk well: by listening to adults who can already talk well and by talking with them. It is true that the average St. John's student quite naturally puts more time on those aspects of human knowledge and inquiry which most attract him, 9 �although as he develops, the area frequently shifts. What he is not allowed to do, and what the elective system encourages, is to blackball whatever he finds difficult, thereby maiming himself intellectually. The elective system operates pretty much the way our political elections do; and James Bryce noted decades ago that the American electorate does not so much choose the man it wants in as vote against the man it wants out. Students do not so much elect what interests them as dodge what frightens them. Intellectual muscle, like other muscle, depends on a balanced ration, not on a diet of favorite dishes. This is a hard truth for many of our progressive educators, but one with which educated men everywhere are quite familiar. "It is too early to tell whether St. John's has the answer or not." It is somewhat doubtful if there is an "answer" to have. But there is long human experience back of the teaching which St. John's is doing. If by "answer" is meant the ability of the College's graduates to "make good," St. John's would have to reply that no selfrespecting educational institution would consent to measure the worth of its work by the average size of its alumni's incomes. That the graduate who has learned to think will find many things easy that the man who cannot think finds painfully difficult, is obviously true. But history does not record a necessary correlation between material success on the one hand and intellectual and moral worth on the other. We should recall for our good, now and then, how many of the world 's great men were "failures." Any educational institution whose faculty can practise the liberal arts is capable of detecting whether its students are learning to do so. It does not have to "wait ten years" before "evaluating" its work. On the other hand, it cannot guarantee even an educated graduate against war, famine, earthquake, or other catastrophes. Nor can any other institution. All a college can do at the .best is, not to guarantee its alumni from catastrophe, but to teach them how to meet catastrophe. If the present war cures our colleges from trying to guarantee comfort and prosperity to their graduates, it will not be fought wholly in vain. If it can teach the colleges that what our country asks of them is not successful alumni, but useful citizens, our victory will be sweet. War can cause anguish, and anguish sometimes brings contrition, and contrition is a fair start towards understanding. "St. John's has a good curriculum but is about to collapse financially." This practical prophecy the Board will recognize as based on tangible, if dated, evidence. Just previously to the introduction of the present curriculum, those who knew the affairs of the College 10 �had every reason to fear its imminent collapse. The determination to exploit educationally that near-catastrophe in large part made possible what St. John's is and stands for today. I believe the Board will agree with me that the vitality of the College springs in great measure from its resolution in 193 7 to tackle the job without money, do the job, and call for help. That this call has been generously heeded sprang, I ain convinced, primarily from the fact that the College was doing the job, not offering to do it if somebody would make it safe to do. The risks it then took have served ever since as a pledge to its friends that it meant business and that its financial needs reflected carefully chosen means to a clearly envisaged end. But on this problem too it is worth . our avoiding the childish fallacy I have just ascribed to colleges in general. Just as they cannot guarantee their graduates an income or even physical survival, so neither can any institution guarantee its own survival. Those of us whose picture of the world was formed before 1914 sometimes have to pinch ourselves to recall that a large part of that snug, successful, comfortable civilization lies in ruins about us and that the rest of it is fighting for its very life. Today it ill behooves a college of all places not to recognize that its first obligation is not security but performance of duty. It can be prudent in fitting means to end; it cannot play safe as an educational policy without forfeiting the right to the very means it seeks at all cost to guarantee. That St. John's has prospered during the past few trying years is due not merely to good fortune but to its courage as an institution in meeting its responsibilities. That courage and responsibility have attracted support from men and women able to recognize those qualities. "St. John's will not collapse financially, because it is operated by the University of Chicago, which will look out for its material needs. But since it is an experiment conducted by that University, it is not a free agent, and may come to an end when the experiment has yielded publishable findings." Of all the misapprehensions listed in this Report this one was once the most widespread. Although the College has never been in any way connected with the University of Chicago, it is easy to see where this particular legend started. The President of the University of Chicago joined our Board when I became head of the College; he was for a time Chairman of the Board: he still is a member. For years he had publicly advocated the sort of education St. John's is giving. Perhaps more important than that was the assumption of the average newspaper reader that 11 �there must be a connection of this sort: otherwise the College would not dare to push ahead. In short most members of the newspaper public, who did not predict financial collapse, assumed as the only other plausible hypothesis that Chicago money would keep us from collapse. For the colleges have taught the public not to expect action without advance subsidy. I tried to tell the story of an unsubsidized action in the July 1941 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The Treasurer's Report for January 1941 fills in the gaps in that narrative. There is one last group of comments from those who recognize the vitality of the College and its work but find other reasons than its educational purpose and practice for that vitality. "It is special teaching methods that give the College life, not the subject matter it insists upon." Needless to say the College employs no teaching method that ·has not been used intermittently for thousands of years. "Then it is a specially brilliant faculty." We do not admit the compliment. After five years we have naturally become more competent to our task. One does not read the great books steadily year after year without being in a better position to teach them to undergraduates than even most leading scholars now are. But that is because of the work we have been doing, not because of our average intellectual capacity. We have, quite simply, re-educated ourselves for five years, and we have thereby repaired in part the deficiencies in our previous training. "The faculty of St. John's are enthusiasts, and enthusiasts can educate with any subject matter." I think I can report to the Board quite truthfully that with all the difficult problems the faculty have had to face, they have not had the additional problem of being enthusiasts. I once hired a housepainter who was an enthusiast and it was a costly business. I take it that good workmen incline to like their work, if only because it is, in proportion to their growing competence, good work. I think the faculty of St. John's now have felt this kind of satisfaction to a degree unusual for academic men of our generation. But they are far too busy to be what the word enthusiast suggests. Those who admire enthusiasts habitually conclude their diagnosis with a murmured reminiscence of Mark Hopkins on the end of a log. The anecdote has done American education much disservice by glorifying the living teacher and exempting us from listening to greater ones who were even wiser men than Mark Hopkins and who can still be summoned to our aid through the magic of the books they left behind them. 12 �The misstatements quoted above tell, it is true, little or nothing about St. John's, but by implication they tell a great deal about the state of liberal education in America today, about what most Americans think a college of liberal arts is and ought to be, about what kind of education Americans want for their sons. Let us sum up the misstatements in those terms. We Americans do not expect our children to be able by college age to read first-rate books and are content to have them read a few passages or a few of the great books in a special field and be told what is in the rest of them in survey courses. First-rate books are all right for the sons of our rich neighbors who can afford to concern themselves with the problems free men have always examined. For ourselves, we would rather our boy learned how to earn money and we believe that courses in a liberal arts college can somehow teach him to do so. Is not this the "age of specialization"? We have no faith that reading the first-rate will form the mind in any useful way. We believe that the world's greatest books are "culture" and we believe that culture is for the rich. We cannot conceive why a boy should study both ancient books and modern ones, both humanistic ones and scientific ones. Classics were written in Greek and Latin and are "culture." The up-to-date and the scientific are useful and true. Nor do we want · him to read medieval books, because even the greatest books of medieval Christendom are not worth reading unless you believe them. We are not convinced that the reading of great books would be more favorable to education than the reading of lesser books. The important thing is the teacher. He should be skillful and enthusiastic,- or our sons will become listless. What he teaches, provided it will be useful to making money, does not greatly matter. We Americans once provided liberal education in our colleges of liberal arts, a kind of education aimed at liberating the intellectual powers through discipline, and this aim is again the aim of St. John's College. But we were able to provide it for a very few of our sons. It is not true that we provided it for the rich only, but it is true that at the college level liberal education was thought of primarily as preparation for the learned professions. Since those days we have expanded incredibly the number of young men who "go to college." But we are not giving even those of them who propose to enter the learned professions, a genuine liberal education. We are trying instead to give them the specifically useful in a pitiful effort to prepare them against the utterly unknown demands of their future life. It is more than possible that the War and its aftermath will 13 �teach us the folly of t his substitution, will teach us how seriously our sons will need a more versatile preparation for living, how seriously we will need disciplined thinkers instead of college "majors." But I am in hopes it will teach us one more thing. I am in hopes it will teach us that if our modern industrial society is to be selfgoverning, not only must we restore the sort of liberal education that will prepare adequately for citizenship; we must set about making it available to all young Americans. That is a formidable task, but it is one that is worthy of the American tradition. If we propose to guard the freedom for which many of our fellow citizens are now dying, and if we expect to exercise it on the basis of a complex technology, we dare not aim at less. Once more, the comments and questions which have greeted the St. John's Program can be classified under three headings: What does liberal education do? Whom is such education for? What chance has it of surviving in our world? The answers to those questions are simple answers, even if they are difficult to understand for institutions which have for many decades not asked the questions. Liberal education frees the human intellect by disciplining its powers. It removes a man's impediments to the complete use of whatever thinking powers he may possess. Since to live well, since even to earn a living, requires a man to think, liberal education is the basic preparation for life. But it is a full-time job and cannot be carried on adequately by institutions that attempt simultaneously to give occupational training and- what they may call "practical" knowledge. That kind of knowledge can be speedily acquired, whether on the job or in a postgraduate professional school, by the man who has learned to think. It can be acquired only with difficulty and inadequately by the rrian who has not. The penalty which contemporary society has paid for omitting this basic sort of education is the multiplication of highly trained specialists, who are, fundamentally, uneducated men and who are inadequate to the varied responsibilities of life, whether as citizens, as husbands, as fathers, as friends, as soldiers. But since liberal education is the sort that enables each man to think as well as his native powers permit, it is by definition appropriate to all men. It is not for the rich alone, nor the intellectual elite alone, nor the gauleiters and commissars alone. A free society that limits it to a small fraction of its citizens, does so at the peril of its existence. And the effect which liberal education seeks is not the ability of graduates to " pass" a certain test but the completest possible realization of the powers to think, on the part of each human individual. By ignoring the ideal goal of universal liberal education, 14 �America allowed such education to transform itself into a training for white-collar workers and those who aspire to a white collar. Then, quite logically, since there are many honorable occupations in which white collars are not worn, America declared that it would be folly to give liberal education, that is white-collar training, to everybody. But true liberal education, of the kind American colleges stopped giving, is appropriate to any occupation a human being may properly perform. Since man's most specifically human powers are the powers of the intellect, the powers of understanding, the man who neglects to use and develop those powers does so at the peril of becoming a shrewd and dangerous animal. And since happiness depends on the full use of man's proper powers, those men who become shrewd animals do not become happy. The ultimate price of neglecting to free the intellect is bestiality. What chance has such education of surviving in our practical modern world? First, a glance at our modern world raises some doubt as to whether practicality is among its characteristics. Practical men do not treat such problems as peace, the distribution of material goods, or the education of their young, as we treated those problems in the twenties and the thirties. Secondly, the gloomiest fact about this question, whether true liberal education can survive, is that it should be seriously asked . To the extent that we know so little about it that we ask that question, it has already' ceased. Liberal education cannot of course be killed so long as human beings think. But it can be gravely weakened or postponed in a given place at a given time. What we mean by civilization, with its law, its science, its institutions, its art, is the product of the intellectual arts. To fight a war to preserve that product without taking measures to recover the arts that produced it is to misunderstand a basic fact. It is a fact which the Nazis, whom we have come so much to resemble, also misunderstand . It is that man was not made to support the social order but that the purpose of a good social order, like the purpose of liberal education, is to free the soul of man. STRINGFELLOW BARR Annapolis, Maryland, July, 1942. 15 �A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES ON THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM ST. JoHN' s REVIVAL, Time Magazine, July 19, 1937. EXPERIMENT, by Charter Heslep, Washington Daily News, July 28, 1937. A CoLLEGE EDUCATION FROM 117 BooKs, by Louis M. Lyons, The Boston Sunday Globe, September 13, 1937. BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS IN EDUCATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Talks, October, 1937. Reported from an address given over the Columbia Broadcasting System. EDUCATION BY " BooK LEARNING," by Thomas R. Henry, The Washington Star, December 5, 1937. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING, by W. A. P . Martin, The Commonweal, December 31, 1937. A CR1s1s IN LIBERAL EDUCATION, by Scott Buchanan, The Amherst Graduates' Quarterly, February, 1938. Reprints available. CONCERNING THE NEw PROGRAM AT ST. JoHN's, by R. Catesby Taliaferro, The Maryland Club Woman, February, 1938. THE ST. JoHN's COLLEGE PROGRAM, by Richard F. Cleveland, The Daily Record, Baltimore, Md., March 23, 1938. ST. JoHN ' s EXPERIMENT TO RECLAIM A LosT HERITAGE, by George Bull, S. J ., America, April 23, 1938. ARISTOTLE IN ANNAPOLIS, by Donald Slesinger, Survey Graphic, June, 1938. A COLLEGE REBELS, by Stringfellow Barr, The Key Reporter, Phi Beta Kappa News Magazine, Autumn, 1938. BACK TO THE CLASSICS, by Philip S. Marden, The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, October, 1938. ALL QurnT AT ST. JoHN's, by Francis Beirne, "Our Educational Correspondent," The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 4, 1938. THE ST. JoHN 's PROGRAM, by Stringfellow Barr, The Virginia Spectator, December, 1938. Reprints available. THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, in Today and Tomorrow, by Walter Lippmann, appearing in 165 newspapers. December 27, 1938. Reprints available. JoHN DoE GoEs TO ST. JoHN 's, by Stringfellow Barr, Progressive Education, January, 1939. FROM ST. JoHN's TO MARK HoPKINS, by C. J. Wilgus, The Journal of Higher Education, January, 1939. EDUCATORS STRIVE FOR "FREE MIND," by Hedley Donovan, The Washington Post, January 15, 1939. A Series of Four Articles on The St. John's Program by Lee McCardell, The Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23, 24, 25, and 26, 1939. THE CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION, by Mortimer J. Adler, The Social Frontier, February, 1939. HUTCHINS OF CHICAGO, Part I, "The Daring Young Man," and Part II, "The Flying Trapeze," by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, March and April, 1939. SocRATES CROSSES THE DELAWARE: St. John's College and the Great Books, by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, June, 1939. Reprints available. 16 �THE ART OF LIBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Free America, September and October, 1939. Reprints available. BACK TO FrnsT PRINCIPLES, by Scott Buchanan, Survey Graphic, October, 1939. TowARDS A D1sc1PLINED MIND, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Head Mistresses Association of the East, November 10-11, 1939. THE ENDS AND MEANS OF GENERAL EDUCATION, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Fifty-Third Annual Convention of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, November 24-25, 1939. Reprints available. THE TRAINING OF A FREE MIND, by Stringfellow Barr, Catholic Digest (Condensed from Free America), December, 1939. THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL AT ST. JoHN's, by John S. Kieffer, The Classical Journal, December, 1939. THE ART OF LiBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Character and Citizenship (Reprinted from Free America), January, 1940. How CAN WE BE TAUGHT TO THINK, 1. "Back to First Principles," by Scott Buchanan in Democracy's Challenge to Education, Farrar & Rinehart, 1940. A PLAN FOR AMERICA, by E. B. White, Harpers Magazine, February, 1940, pages 331-332. THE CLAss1cs: At St. John's They Come Into Their Own Once More, Life Magazine, February 5, 1940. REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT: Supplement to the Bulletin, by Stringfellow Barr, April, 1940. Reprints available. REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT: Supplement to the Bulletin, by Stringfellow Barr, May, 1941. Reprints available. A COLLEGE IN SECESSION, by Stringfellow Barr, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1941. Reprints available. CAUSE FOR ExcI'fEMENT, by Stringfellow Barr, Tomorrow, September, 1941. How CAN OuR SCHOOLS MEET THE WAR EMERGENCY? Radio address by Stringfellow Barr on "Town Hall of .the Air" Program, Detroit, February, 1942. APPEAL TO THE CoLLEGES, Radio address by Stringfellow Barr, Columbia Broadcasting System, May, 1942. Reprints available. WHERE WE OuGHT TO BE, Radio address by Stringfellow Barr, National Broadcasting Company, May, 1942. Reprints available. CLASSICS OF THE WESTERN WoRLD, with forewords by John Erskine and Everett Dean Martin, American Library Association, 1934. One of the book lists out of which the St. John's program grew, this pamphlet contains valuable secondary bibliographical material. It was first published in 1927 by the American Library Association for the use of adult classes. How TO READ A BooK OR THE ART OF GETTING A LIBERAL EDUCATION. By Mortimer .J. Adler, Simon & Schuster, 1940. A book expounding the techniques by which adult groups or individuals can come to terms with the great books. How TO READ A PAGE, by I. A. Richards, W. W. N orton, 1942. Still more detailed techniques of reading. 17 �Copies of this Report may be had on request. Address : The Registrar, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 21 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Supplementary Bulletin, St. John's College, July 1942 Description An account of the resource Supplementary Bulletin, St. John's College, "Report of the President." Published in July 1942. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1942-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SupplementaryBulletin_1942_July President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/61e389ea7ccdca47ae4f0d75f411ad77.pdf 4054ba1ac4090054519ffe5589889841 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplementary Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND MAY, 1941 Founded as King William's School, 1696 Chartered as St. John's College, 1784 �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplementary Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND MAY, 1941 Founded as King William's School, 1696 Chartered as St. John's College, 1784 �BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS THOMAS PARRAN, ]R., Chairman ROBERT M. HUTCHINS w. STRYKER FRANCIS PICKENS MILLER, CLARENCE RICHARD F. CoLBY M. CHESTER Vice-Chairman CLEVELAND, Secretary F. LINDER AMOS F. HUTCHINS HAROLD EDWIN ScoTT BucHANAN wARFIELD, JR. BEARDSLEY RuML PAULL. BANFIELD ROBERT 0. HERVEY ALLEN BONNELL WILLIAM J. FRENCH STRINGFELLOW BARR HENRY F. STURDY �The St. John's Program is a four-year all-required curriculum based on the study of the great books shown in this frontispiece. A statement of this Program is contained -in the current College catalogue, which may be obtained from the Registrar ���REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Among the sentences written in 1787 which are required reading for Americans in the fateful year 1941 is one from the pen of Alexander Hamilton: "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." And as if to challenge his fellow-countrymen of 1941 to reflect carefully and choose wisely, Hamilton added: "If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind." "The People of the State of New York," to whom Hamilton addressed those words, accepted his counsel and helped set up a government by "reflection and choice" instead of permitting anarchy to grow into government by "accident and force." The Americans of 1787 met their crisis, made their decision, and elected to play their part. We, their descendants, face the perhaps graver crisis of 1941. By our conduct and example we· may well decide the important question whether government by reflection and choice shall give way everywhere to government by accident and force. As I write these words, we have not to date made our decision, nor elected the part we shall act . .We have calculated danger. We have washed our hands. We have given aid short of war; at the risk of war. We have studied the Gallup polls to see how many of our neighbors might be willing to play a part with or without making a genuine decision, with or without genuine reflection or real choice. We have argued the necessity to "sell" the people-a dangerous metaphor for a free people, though not a dangerous one for Goebbels. We have accused each other of war-mongering, of appeasing. Above all, we have been confused, and we have exhibited to the delighted eyes of the announced champions of government by force a sort of low-tension paralysis. For we have not achieved a clear statement of what we would be defending if we entered the war, and failing that statement, we have �failed of a true decision. The spring of 1941 will go down in American history as the spring of the paralyzed will and the spring of nightmare. For is it not in nightmares that danger steadily approaches while no finger can be lifted in defense? Unclear statements and sentimental statements there have been galore. We have talked loudly, if not clearly, of the American way of life; but whether it meant courage to do our duty in the face of injustice and brutality or whether it meant the right to be left alone, we did not make clear. It may have meant sleeping late in the morning instead of being roused at dawn. It may have meant never walking where a car could be driven, instead of carrying a pack under shellfire. It may have meant free enterprise, the 1941 version of Adam Smith's "mercantile republic," that eighteenth-century City of God, now become the City of Salesmanship. Maybe it meant the right to abolish drunkenness by voting prohibition, abolish war by voting neutrality, abolish blood and toil and tears and sweat by voting billions for defense. Perhaps we have. been paralyzed by guilt. Who are we to throw the first stone or drop the first bomb or sink the first submarine? As President Hutchins pointed out, we have not lived up yet to our own ideals. Yet, our forefathers, when they set up a government capable of defending this republic against external aggression as against internal violence, were under no delusion that they were themselves without sin. At what point did dangerous aggression become a purely relative and merely regrettable matter? Perhaps the real origin of our paralysis is not the knowledge that we, like all men, have also sinned, but that we are ignorant of any assumptions underlying the American Constitution that are worth dying to defend. The preamble of the Constitution will not tell us, for we have lost the ability to read that kind of English. Justice, domestic . tranquillity, general welfare, and the blessings of liberty? Propaganda words!-in this case, we have been taught, the propaganda of !he propertied class in the American colonies. How many Americans really disagree with Thrasymachus' statement that justice is the interest of the stronger? You do what you can get away with. You get your cut. Hitler is doing no more, and you in his shoes would do no less. Our forefathers naively thought that no republic could endure, no matter how wise its laws, unless its citizens possessed the cardinal virtues. They could name the virtues. They were justice, courage, temperance, and prudence. But we do not fall for abstract words like that. And in so far as we do not fall for them, we risk judging 2 �that a republic can endure even if its citizens are unfair, cowardly, greedy, and foolish . But can it? If this famous American way of life is not aimed at these virtues, or if Hitler's way is aimed at them just as accurately, why die to preserve one and destroy the other? One might vote a billion or two to preserve our way, out of pure prejudice and as a public works project; but it would be stupid to die. Patrick Henry got a good hand and a good press for choosing between death and the loss of liberty; but then he was not subject to the draft anyhow. Maybe Patrick Henry meant by liberty what Montesquieu in the same century meant: "In governments, that is, in societies directed by laws, liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will." That is certainly a more complicated right than the right to be let alone. Perhaps liberty was conceived by our forefathers as the precious right to act justly towards other men. Perhaps liberty is not the word in 1941 to bring us back to ourselves, since it is only a means to an end. Perhaps justice, abstract as it also is to ears attuned only to concrete things, might rouse an echo in our hearts, might move our wills. Certainly the word democracy does not seem to have roused or moved. Do we need to summon the ideas that once lay back of democracy? Hitler and Mussolini repeatedly declared, long before the shooting began, that democracy was decadent. From time to time we have heartened ourselves with phrases about ballots, not bullets. We would show them. Have we? Or have they shown us? As a matter of fact, could we show them? Not, certainly, as some wise men have pointed out, by beating them at their own game, by outsmarting them at diplomacy, out-lying them in propaganda. It was Jacques Maritain who pointed out that the '' moderate Machiavellianism" of the democracies could never defeat the all-out Machiavellianism of Hitler. It is just possible that democracy, as we have known it and practised it and preached it, really is dead, and that Hitler is proving it. If so, we may yet live to be grateful to our teacher. What he cannot teach, because it is not true, is that the ideas which once made democracy great are also decadent. Ideas do not decay; yet people's understanding of them can decay, all the same. And literally as sure as shooting, a free republic cannot defend itself against aggressive tyranny unless its citizens understand those ideas which make men free and guard their freedom. No free republic can fight off tyranny unless its citizens love justice more than their cut. I suggest that it is the loss of those ideas which has paralyzed the 3 �will of the American Republic in 1941, as it has already paralyzed the will of the peoples Hitler has subjected. If this Report numbers the consequences of that loss, it is because of the inescapable connection between the decay of liberal education and the decay of liberal government. These same forefathers of ours who could use words like justice and liberty, and make them carry meaning, were deeply aware that no government by "reflection and choice" could hope to stand unless citizens received the sort of liberal education that would enable them to reflect well and choose by the light of understanding. This will account for the urgency with which they established colleges of liberal arts, not for the purpose of teaching what those colleges teach today, specialized knowledge aimed at an immediate livelihood, at pe.rsonal "success," but for the purpose of disciplining the intellectual powers of young men to the point where real reflection and therefore real choice became possible. St. John's College, along with many other of our older colleges of liberal arts, bears witness to this most practical of public policies. When this seventeenth-century foundation was re-chartered under its present name the year was 1784, three years before Alexander Hamilton wrote the words which open this Report. It is significant that, of the men who petitioned the State of Maryland to grant our charter, one, William Paca, had signed the Declaration of Independence; and that three other signers, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Samuel Chase, and Thomas Stone, became members of its Board of Visitors and Governors. Equally significant is the preamble of the College Charter: "WHEREAS, Institutions for the liberal education of youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order to train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest men for discharging the various offices and duties of life, both civil and religious, with usefulness and reputation, and such institutions of learning have accordingly been promoted and encouraged by the wisest and best regulated States: Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland, that a college or general seminary of learning . . . . . " Let us note that colleges like St. John's were not established to teach men "useful" ways of making more money than their neighbors, nor, on the other hand, to teach them the useless but decorative charms of "pure" culture: they were to teach them to practise the , liberal arts, to use their intellects, to reflect, to make choices, in order that a free society might be able to govern itself wisely, freely, and justly, and not fall a prey to government by force. The founders of the Republic were hard-headed enough to see the high benefit of such colleges to the Republic, without seeking that benefit in the pseudoutilities of "practical" courses. 4 �I shall not outline here what I have attempted to outline in earlier reports: how our colleges forsook the task assigned them and prostituted themselves to other ends. I shall not point out again why liberal education is a necessity for free societies, nor why specialized training, unsupported by liberal education, is fit only for bureaucrats, slaves, and in a sense for animals. For animals, whether human or non-human, can be taught useful tasks. Already by 1910, an Address to the Trustees of Amherst College, presented by the Class of 1885, pointed out the dangerous substitution and its inevitable results for a free society. Its results are now with us. Either Hamilton or Madison shed light on the matter in hand when he wrote in No. ~1 of the Federalist: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." We twentieth-century Americans, with our anti-theological bias and our trivial blasphemies parading as common sense, are unlikely to read in that terse statement all that the eighteenth century could still read. For we think of the eighteenth century as the age of Voltaire and forget what an intimate part of its intellectual equipment Christian theology still was. Yet this distinction between men and angels we have pretty well lost, along with the distinction between men and beasts. It is worth recalling. Angels, men were once taught, have intellects but no bodies. They therefore know justice and their knowledge is never obscured by passions, by physical appetites, or, in our mock-modest contemporary terms, by their emotions. Beasts have passions, but not intellects. They must therefore be governed by force, for they cannot be , persuaded by reason. But man, as-the Greeks put it, is a rational animal, a logical animal, a speaking animal capable of the word, the logos. Still, he is an animal. By nature, therefore, he can never content himself with a government for long unless it appeal to his reason. By nature, likewise, he is subject, like other animals, to his passions; and no government not armed with force, no matter how near justice it may come, can stand for long. This composite nature of man, our ancestors clearly understood and , plai~ly analyzed. The Constitution of the United States was set up with both facts in mind: man's rationality, which demanded justice, and liberty to . seek that justice; man's animality, which required rationally ordered safeguards if government is to "insure domestic tranquillity" and "provide for the common Defence." Ignorance of this composite nature of man renders the Constitution of the United States fundamentally unintelligible. It then becomes a pious hope that everybody will act like an angel, or a skilfully concealed assumption that 5 �everybody is a mere beast. Nor does a man wittingly die for pious hopes or for concealed assumptions. Hamiltop and Madison and their contemporaries knew that, because of their intellectual powers, men are capable of erecting and maintaining government by reflection, deliberation, and choice. They knew also that, because of their animality, men's political "interests" must be harmonized. One of the pitiful chapters of American historical thinking is the .adolescent delight with which our twentiethcentury debunking historians have discovered that our ancestors were concerned with interests. Would that they had likewise discovered how deeply concerned they were simultaneously with ideas. Today our people oscillate rapidly between a sentimental faith in the goodness of man, a faith once known as angelism, and a cheaply cynical belief that men operate exactly as do other beasts. The first faith slacks toward anarchy; the second as surely forearms tyranny. It was further known, at the time that our Republic was planned and established, that so constantly do men's passions war against their powers of reason that these powers cannot be counted upon to operate dependably, either in the political field or elsewhere, until they have been disciplined and strengthened; and the task of disciplining and strengthening the intellectual powers of men under the most propitious conditions was delegated to the college of liberal arts. That is why such colleges were conceived of, not as pleasant asylums for the offspring of the rich nor as trade schools for the servile poor, but as the very necessary bulwarks of free government. Nor would the men who wrote our Constitution have dreamed for a moment that it could endure for many decades supported only by the "liberal" education our colleges and universities now afford. The Constitution was intended to be merely an instrument through which free men might conveniently govern themselves. Nobody supposed it could alone guarantee their freedom. Ultimately, that freedom is internal, and ultimately it is based on a discipline that is equally internal. Today, we do not possess that internal discipline in a measure adequate for long to guarantee our liberties. If we lose at last our power to govern ourselves, we shall forfeit the right to do so. We become what the Nazis assume we are: shrewd animals. In that event, we are as donkeys are, and we must be ruled as donkeys are ruled: by a club and a carrot. The carrot is applied in front; the club, behind. If you want the donkey to reverse the direction in which the donkey is headed, you do not reason with him. You place the carrot behind, and club him in the face . Those who have observed totalitarian government closely assure us 6 �that two things move it: threats and bribes. Ignore the intellect, and the club and carrot rule what is left : the body, with its passions and its instincts. The most recent reminder of these simple, brutal, beastly facts about mankind may be found in Mr. Walt · Disney's version of Pinocchio. The little boys who became donkeys did so merely by gratifying to the limit their physical appetite for pleasure. But some of those who saw the picture may have attached too little importance to the fact that, in order to go to Pleasure Island, they left-school. Reflection on Pinocchio will tell us why, in the case of so many of our public men who neglected to fit themselves with a liberal education, the spoken word so often turns into the telltale bray. There is another way of telling the story. The curriculum once afforded by our "general seminaries of learning" concerned itself with ends, and the relation of ends to their appropriate means. Specialized education of the sort which has flowered in the "elective system" of the undergraduate college is concerned with means. The student first chooses what he is going to do and is then taught ways of attaining his end. There was a time when he would have been taught to criticize his choice of end. And his mind would have been freed in order that he might choose an end wisely. Free men are men who choose ends. The unfree accept the ends which are dictated to them, whether by their whim and prejudice, or by a government which arouses their fear or awakens their greed. There is a nice test for a liberal education. Regardless of social contacts or of courses that pretend to be commercially useful, do our colleges prepare men to make fearless and responsible decisions under a Constitution like ours and-equally important, if only recently relevant-does their preparation give a man anything that would stand by him in a concentration camp? A genuine discipline in the liberal arts would meet both tests. There are those who, not connected with St. John's College, have yet seen in the type of liberal education it has restored a return to the principles which might make democracy intelligible again-not merely pleasant or easy, but intelligible, and therefore operable. The Latin motto which the seal of the St. John's Program bears-"! make free men out of children by means of books and balances"-alludes to that faith, the faith of our forefathers: that true education in the liberal arts can bring out in young citizens the powers without which they cannot govern themselves, either through our Constitution or through any other that might be devised in its place. For responsible government is responsible not merely in the ordinary sense, that 7 �those entrusted with political power are "responsible to the people," byway of lobby, petition, Western Union, or merely Gallup. The art of responsible government does not consist in how to please voters, how to "sell" them this political action or that. Voters, under a truly respon~ible government, are not customers to be sold anything, and only a nation which had largely sold out to salesmanship would suppose they were. A genuinely responsible government is answerable to truth and reason; and to that reason both leader and follower are equally answerable. Voting ] a, whether in a Nazi plebiscite or a rigged American election, does not constitute what was once meant by "the consent of the governed." It is the reasons for consenting that should interest a free society. The sole importance of a majority vote-of men, not donkeys-is that, by and large, Americans have believed that reasonable steps, if properly debated and deliberated upon, would commend themselves to more men than not. This faith is based on a fact that Descartes observes in the opening sentence of his Discourse on Method: "Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed." With this faith went once the knowledge that the reason in human beings, the good sense, must be cultivated, exercised, disciplined. Assuming all this, and assuming that the curriculum St. John's introduced four years ago will furnish the exercise and discipline it has already furnished through many centuries, it yet remains true that what is being done at St. John's, even should ~t spread again to colleges throughout the land, may be too little and too late. We have lost valuable decades in the American tradition of liberal education. A generation has grown up that shows an understandable sympathy for the principles on which totalitarian society rests, rather than for the principle that all men are rational and therefore basically equal. It will be years before the work being done now at St. John's, or similar work that any other college might immediately undertake, could bear the fruit in political and economic action which would save the American way of life in the sense in which our forefathers would have used that phrase. Is there time for that? Whether there is time or not for our people to find again in liberal education the strength and understanding they once found there, the College must perform its task. From a practical point of view, its uncompromising acceptance of that task has affected more persons than the undergraduates who attend it. The parents of those undergraduates have been enabled to make a choice for their sons which they could not otherwise have made. Those of us who teach in the College draw from that choice daily strength for our task. -8 �You on the Board who have labored to make it possible for us to teach have thereby shared in the common enterprise, as have the hundreds of men and women, scattered throughout the country, who have made financial sacrifices in order that this work might be done. It is .in the nature of such undertakings that those who participate derive strength from each other. In their joint effort they find the liberty that is the right to do what they ought to will. It was of this liberty, proof against external catastrophe and the vicissitudes of human life, that George Washington spoke when, discussing the necessity to submit a good Constitution whether it were accepted or rejected, he enjoined: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest may repair. The event is in the hands of God." Finally, the educational program of the College was never based upon a grandiose design to save the nation. There are indeed signs that the nation may shortly need saving. There is plenty of evidence that the sort of thing which St. John's is doing is in the long run . necessary if our kind of society is to be saved. But although free men may know, as they have often known, that true liberal education safeguards free republics, it would be misunderstanding liberal education to suppose that the proper purpose of a liberal arts college is to support free government. It would be nearer the truth to say that the true end of free government is to make liberal education possible. Lest I be supposed to say here that the purpose of the United States Constitution is to support colleges, I may be allowed to observe that colleges are not the on!y places in which men perfect their intellectual processes. Were that the case, our people would be today in an even sorrier plight than they are really in. But it is most true to say that if the purpose of government is to preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the first two of these objects are ordered towards the third. We live and enjoy liberty that we may pursue happiness, and the man who penned this triune phrase was perfectly aware of where that happiness lay: in the fullest possible development, and use, of man's most human powers, the powers of the intellect. Under our Bill of Rights Congress may not prohibit you or me from worshiping God-but suppose we know no God to worship? It may not forbid us to speak our minds-but suppose we have no minds to speak? It may not prevent our daily paper from telling us the truth-but suppose our paper does not know how to tell us the truth, or which truths are worth telling? Congress may not prevent you and me from peaceably assembling-but why assemble if we have nothing worth saying to each other? It may not in certain 9 �cases take from you or me our right of trial by jury-but suppose no good men and true can be discovered? In an important sense, the Bill of Rights is negative: it states that Government shall not by force take from us the essential liberty of doing things we ought to do: to deliberate, debate, exchange ideas, judge each other as peers. Nowhere does it, can it, or should it tell ·us either the list of things we ought to do or how to do them. That, in the opinion of our ancestors, was the business of liberal education. That, in their opinion, was an arduous process; for it is harder to develop in men their native powers of self-control, their native powers of thinking through, their native powers to follow up with courageous and just action than it is to tug and drive them, with club and carrot. Tyrants forbid citizens to do their duty as free men. Free government permits them to do it. Liberal education enables them to do it. STRINGFELLOW BARR Annapolis, Maryland, May, 1941. IO �A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES ON THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM ST. JoHN's REVIVAL, Time Magazine, July 19, 1937. EXPERIMENT, by Charter Heslep, Washington Daily News, July 28, 1937. A COLLEGE EDUCATION FROM 117 BooKs, by Louis M. Lyons, The Boston Sunday Globe, September 13, 1937. BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS IN EDUCATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Talks, October, 1937. Reported from an address given over the Columbia Broadcasting System. EDUCATION BY "BooK LEARNING," by Thomas R. Henry, The Washington Star, December 5, 1937. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING, by W. A. P. Martin, The Commonweal, December 31, 1937. A CRISIS IN LIBERAL EDUCATION, by Scott Buchanan, The Amherst Graduates' Quarterly, February, 1938. Reprints available. CONCERNING THE NEW PROGRAM AT ST. JoHN's, by R. Catesby Taliaferro, The Maryland Club Woman, February, 1938. THE ST. JoHN's COLLEGE PROGRAM, by Richard F. Cleveland, The Daily Record, Baltimore, Md., March 23, 1938. ST. JoHN's EXPERIMENT To RECLAIM A LosT HERITAGE, by George Bull, S. ]., America, April 23, 1938. ARISTOTLE IN ANNAPOLIS, by Donald Slesinger, Survey Graphic, June, 1938. A CoLLEGE REBELS, by Stringfellow Barr, The Key Reporter, Phi Beta Kappa News Magazine, Autumn, 1938. BACK TO THE CLASSICS, by Philip S. Marden, The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, October, 1938. ALL QurnT AT ST. JoHN's, by Francis Beirne, "Our Educational Correspondent," The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 4, 1938. THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, by Stringfellow Barr, The Virginia Spectator, December, 1938. Reprints available. THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, in Today and Tomorrow, by Walter Lippmann, appearing in 165 newspapers, December 27, 1938. Reprints available. JoHN DoE GoEs TO ST. JoHN's, by Stringfellow Barr, Progressive Education, January, 1939. FROM ST. JoHN's 'rn MARK HoPKINs, by C. J. Wilgus, The Journal of Higher Education, January, 1939. EDUCATORS STRIVE FOR "FREE MIND," by Hedley Donovan, The Washington Post, January 15, 1939. A Series of Four Articles on THE ST. JoHN's PROGRAM, by Lee McCardell, The Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23, 24, 25, and 26, 1939. THE CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION, by Mortimer J. Adler, The Social Frontier, February, 1939. HUTCHINS OF CmcAGo, Part I, "The Daring Young Man," and Part II, "The Flying Trapeze," by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, March and April, 1939. SocRATES CROSSES THE DELAWARE: St. John's College and the Great Books, by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, June, 1939. Reprints available. 11 �THE ART OF LIBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Free America, September and October, 1939. Reprints available. BAcK To FIRST PRINCIPLES, by Scott Buchanan, Survey Graphic, October, 1939. TOWARDS A D1sc1PLINED MIND, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Head Mistresses Association of the East, November 10-11, 1939. THE ENDS AND MEANS OF GENERAL EDUCATION, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Fifty-Third Annual Convention of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, November 24-25, 1939. Reprints available. THE TRAINING OF A FREE MrnD, by Stringfellow Barr, Catholic Digest (Condensed from Free America), December, 1939. THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL AT ST. JoHN's, by John S. Kieffer, The Classical Journal, December, 1939. THE ART OF LIBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Character and Citizenship (Reprinted from Free America), January, 1940 How CAN WE BE TAUGHT TO THINK, 1. "Back to First Principles," by Scott Buchanan in Democracy's Challenge to Education, Farrar & Rinehart, 1940. A PLAN FOR AMERICA, by E . B. White, Harpers Magazine, February, 1940, pages 331-332. THE CLASSICS: At St. John's They Come Into Their Own Once More, Life Magazine, February 5, 1940. REPORT or THE PRESIDENT: Supplement to the Bulletin, by Stringfellow Barr, April, 1940. Reprints available. CLASSICS OF THE WESTERN WoRLD, with forewords by John Erskine and Everett Dean Martin, American Library Association, 1934. One of the book lists out of which the St. John's program grew, this pamphlet contains valuable secondary bibliographical material. It was first published in 1927 by the American Library Association for the use of adult classes. How TO READ A BooK OR THE ART OF GETTING A LIBERAL EDUCATION, by Mortimer J. Adler, Simon & Schuster, 1940. A book expounding the techniques by which adult groups or individuals can come to terms with the great books. 12 �Copies of this Report may be had on request. Address: The Registrar, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 20 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Supplementary Bulletin, St. John's College, May 1941 Description An account of the resource Supplementary Bulletin, St. John's College, "Report of the President." Published in May 1941. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1941-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SupplementaryBulletin_1941_May President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d1ed1aaf3ee3f3ce7a5d2ec18f44e700.pdf 05e4a8d570c65af04a07b839498f163a PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplement to the Bulletin ANNAPOLIS . APRIL. Founded as King William's School, 1696 MARYLAND 194 0 Chartered as St. John's College, 1784 �Copies of this Report may be had on request. Address : THE REGISTRAR St . John's College, Annapolis, Maryland �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplement to the Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND APRIL, 1 9 4 0 Founded as King William's School, 16 9 6 Chartered as St. John's College, 17 8 4 �Board of Visitors and Governors Chairman, DR. THOMAS PARRAN, JR., Surgeon-General, U. S. Public Health Service, Washington, D. C. Vice-Chairman, FRANCIS PICKENS MILLER, Pickens Hill, Fairfax, Virginia. Secretary, RICHARD F. CLEVELAND, Baltimore Trust Bldg., Baltimore, Maryland, Lawyer. DR. AMOS F. HUTCHINS, 1227 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore, Maryland, Surgeon. EDWIN WARFIELD, JR., Editor, The Daily Record, 15 E. Saratoga Street, Baltimore, Maryland. PAULL. BANFIELD, Headmaster, The Landon School for Boys, Edgemoor, Washington, D. C. ROBERT 0. BONNELL, President, The Public Bank of Maryland, 15 E . Fayette Street, Baltimore, Maryland. STRINGFELLOW BARR, President, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. DR. ROBERT M. HUTCHINS, President, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. CLARENCE W. STRYKER, Professor Emeritus of History, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. COLBY M. CHESTER, Chairman, General Foods Corporation, 250 Park Avenue, New York City. HAROLD F. LINDER, Member of firm of Carl M . Loeb 8 Company, 61 Broadway, New York City. DR. SCOTT BUCHANAN, Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. BEARDSLEY RUML, Treasurer, R.H. Macy 8 Company, Broadway and 34th Street, New York City. HERVEY ALLEN, "Bonfield," Oxford, Talbot County, Maryland, Author. DR. WILLIAM J. FRENCH, Director, Anne Arundel County Health Department, Annapolis, Maryland. The Governor of the St;ite of Maryland, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Delegates of the Maryland General Assembly and the Judges of the Maryland Court of Appeals are ex officio members of the Board. �REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Report of the President The third year of the St. John's Program has been increasingly punctuated by the visits of those who wished to observe its operation in daily practice. The visitors have come singly and in delegations. They have included administrative officers and teachers from other colleges of liberal arts, undergraduates from other institutions, headmasters and principals from the secondary schools. A year ago they came to witness "a novel educational experiment." Most of this year's visitors are aware that the St. John's Program is neither novel nor experimental. Most of them are as aware as we are that the elective system which we have discarded is novel, that it is experimental, and that the experiment has failed. Most of them are aware that St. John's is attempting to restore liberal education, of the sort once available in American colleges of liberal arts. But the questions they ask soon convince us that they are hazy as to what end such education had in view. Since that end dictated the instructional means we are employing, these means have been often misread. We have been heartily congratulated for doing things which we are not doing at all. Individually, our visitors have been most welcome. Collectively, they have by their very number posed serious problems. Our faculty have gladly recognized the professional obligation to tell other teachers what they were doing. They -are fully aware that teachers, like doctors, cannot have trade secrets. But they are also aware that neither the teaching art nor the medical art can be properly practised in a goldfish bowl. We have had therefore to place certain restrictions on the visiting of classes. That much of the problem is not hard to handle. What is disturbing, though understandable, is how little many of our visitors have learned from their visits. In many cases they would have learned far more by devoting the same amount of time to the right reading. If we have often failed to instruct our visitors, at least they have instructed us. Their difficulties have reminded us how �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 5 persistently those who, like ourselves, dedicate themselves to liberal education, substitute means for ends. No matter how earnestly St. John's College strives to avoid that substitution, we shall not be exempt from the common danger. It behooves us not to assume complacently that because we pledged ourselves to a clear purpose three years ago, we cannot be confronted with a broken pledge, or worse yet, a broken purpose. Moreover, even if we have kept the faith, there is still advantage to be got from a clear restatement now. During these three years both the Board and the faculty of St. John's College have gained experience relevant to that common purpose, experience which throws abundant light on the end at which both aim. I therefore invite the Board of Visitors and Governors to reflect again, with us in the faculty, on the end of liberal education, as well as upon the means we at St. John's are using to reach that end. For more than two thousand .years our Western civilization bas drawn sustenance from liberal education. That education, like the civilization it sustained, has had its dark ages and its rebirths; but wherever and whenever it has flourished healthily, its declared purpose has been to liberate the human intellect through the practice of the liberal arts. Wherever and whenever it has flourished, it has recognized these arts as the arts of thinking, of using symbols, and particularly as the arts of using words and numbers. It has recognized that man, as man, has intellectual powers, which. like his physical powers, can be brought through exercise to operate well, and even to operate habitually well. To develop these powers into actual operations, then into good operations, and :finally into habitually good operations has been the end of liberal education. To effect this end, colleges of liberal arts were set up in Europe and in America. Such colleges clearly did not hold a monopoly of the liberal arts, since the arts of thinking are practised well or badly · by all men. They were set up in order to expedite the transformation of intellectual powers into intellectual habits. In order to practise the liberal arts, the colleges selectes subject matters upon which they might be profitably exercised . For obvious reasons, the most basic of these subject matters, in terms of the objective, were languages and mathematics. But �6 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT the aim of the college of liberal ·a rts was not to turn out professionally trained mathematicians or professionally trained linguists. The aim was to develop in men the power to use mathematical and linguistic symbols well on whatever problem human existence might pose them. For a long time in both Europe and America, Latin, Greek, and mathematics were basic subject matters. That the colleges should have chosen Latin and Greek as the best available languages for the practice of the liberal arts was due to a number of considerations, but not least to the fact that each was the vehicle of a great literature, a literature in which truly great ideas had been greatly dealt with. Both these languages, as means, had been moulded to that high end. Both, in brief, had served intellects of the first order, as had, in another set of symbols, mathematics. But the time came when the colleges forgot why they had chosen them and began to teach them professionally. Then men found they were being trained as Latinists, as Hellenists, as mathematicians. Some of them quickly decided that, if professional training was the objective, there were other fields than philology and mathematics in which they would find training more useful. And they were correct. Mathematics, Greek, and Latin began properly to give way to the various subjects now taught in the modern elective system. Having ceased to serve as means towards the end of liberal education, they had become ends in themselves. Next they became means to the practice of a profession; and as such they came into sharp competition with other professional training. Unhappily, this custom left us without liberal education. No other appropriate means to that end replaced Latin, Greek, and mathematics. For the end itself had been forgotten. The difficulty today of re-stating that end is that - as always happens when liberal education declines - there is no contemporary vocabulary in which to do it. The term "liberal arts" has become soft and empty. The very term "intellect" is under universal suspicion. In so far as it continues to signify anything, it has come to signify "the cold light of the intellect," something far removed from "the healthy emotional life" which contemporary man states he wants. Yet no term has replaced it, because on the whole men have not recently felt the need for �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 7 discussing it. Indeed, our colleges have for many years not seriously concerned themselves with the human intellect. They have concerned themselves instead with professional training or sometimes with imitations of professional training. Their most solid "course offerings" have on the whole been designed to prepare young men for a real or imaginary job with real or imaginary wealth ahead. Since there is no contemporary equivalent of the term "intellect," and since St. John's College has re-dedicated itself to developing, in those who come to it, their intellectual powers, I do not think we can yield the traditional term, even if we should be misunderstood. To those who ask us what we mean by the term, we shall have to answer in metaphor, and fortunately we can fall back on that metaphor which countless generations of men have found useful in discussing intellectual operations. We shall beg our questioner to forget for a moment the terms which professional educators now use: trends, attitudes, measurement, student-interest, I.Q.'s, and the like; and to reflect on light. We shall remind him that men get light on things when they reflect; that they see things in a flash; that ideas dawn on them; or that they still feel they are in the dark; that they are blind to the facts, although they admire lucid explanations. Something illuminates their problem; they get a bright idea, or, alas, a hazy, obscure one. That flash of inward light they get is intellectual light. All men have that flash sometimes; some men have it frequently; and a few, through painfully acquired habits of the reason and imagination, can induce it when it is needed. It is that light, and the habits that induce it, that is under discussion when we say that liberal education has always had as its purpose, not the dissemination of facts, not professional training, but the liberation of the human intellect, that it might see that light and see it steadily. Such liberation is the true purpose of every college of liberal arts. The temporary substitution of any other purpose leads straight to confusion and impotence. The ultimate outcome is .either, on the one hand, the ivy-clad impotence of a "cultural" finishing school, or the respectable alternative of professional, vocational, or technical education. �a REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Neither those who have accepted the finishing school, nor those who have accepted professional training, as the proper end of liberal education will understand this year or next the pledges exchanged between you of the Board and us of the faculty three years ago; and I suggest we will do wisely to rest our case upon a metaphor until light dawns again. If we are successful in leading a revival of liberal learning in this country, there are still available terms which will make discourse again possible. Meanwhile, I invite the Board to join the faculty in self-examination, and to see if the decisive steps which St. John's College has taken during the past three years have fulfilled or broken our pledges. The Board will recall that the first of these steps was the agreement in principle, if not in detail, upon the curriculum- · that is, upon the basic means which might be deemed proper to the end we sought in common: the awakening and disciplining of all the intellectual powers. It was determined that the basic materials employed should be a hundred or more of the greatest books which our civilization has produced from Homer to the present. If we were to avoid the intellectualism which the honest word intellect now implies to our generation, such a list would need to include not only books from many times and places but books exhibiting the human mind dealing with all the major sorts of problems that confront it: poetry, history, law, medicine, theology, mathematics, and the natural sciences. But they would be chosen on the basis of their own worth, not on the basis of covering so-called fields of knowledge. Lesson One in the art of thinking would be what Lesson One has been perhaps at every renaissance of liberal learning: watching great thinkers think and following their operations with one's own understanding. We assumed that any young man who consorted habitually with the men who wrote the books we were choosing, and who understood what these men said so far as his capacities allowed, would emerge with those capacities developed. But the books included some genuinely difficult works and were worth a full four years of time, and freedom from intellectual triviality. So we completely abolished the textbook and we completely abolished the elective system. We counted on experience steadily to improve the list through constant re- l �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 9 vision, and steadily to increase our own powers to teach the books on that list. Finally, to protect the reading of the books from dilettantism, we supported the seminar discussions of them with systematic and rigorous work in language, mathematics, and laboratory science. The curricular devices which emerged are familiar to you: seminar on the books twice a week for four years; mathematics five times a week for four years; language instruction five times a week for four years; laboratory science for three hours once a week the first two years, three hours twice a week for the third and fourth year; one or two formal lectures a week. Some of the College visitors, of whom I spoke earlier, have expressed astonishment at the amount of Greek which many of our freshmen have acquired in one year's study but bewilderment at why we did not require, or at least allow, a second year of Greek. Their bewilderment has measured their incomprehension. They have applauded us for teaching so much Greek when we have not been primarily interested in teaching Greek as such. We have sought in Greek the linguistic and literary medium upon which first-class intellectual operations have left their signature; and like our ancestors, in Greek we found them. It is obvious that our requirement of four full years of laboratory science is not an attempt to produce professionally trained physicists or chemists or biologists. We are interested in having our students know what a man is doing when he carries on scientific investigation with a view to explaining the phenomena of nature which confront him. Unless our visitors remember constantly that the subject matters we make use of, along with our ways of teaching them, are dictated by one purpose and by one purpose only, the developing and perfecting of the intellectual powers of our students, then their plaudits and their reservations are equally irrelevant to the problem at which we are working. I should like to recall to the Board that it was only when we had already agreed on that one purpose and on the basic means of achieving it, that they took up the question of who should assume as President of the College the primary obligation of seeing that this purpose was adhered to. I would further recall that, once the curriculum had been set up and an administration �10 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT put in charge of it, the Board chose to undergo a complete reorganization of its own membership in order that the .College might receive from that direction the maximum possible support. The reorganization of the Board was carried out successfully, despite the risk that it would be considered by the public one of those personal altercations which affiict college boards when no common purpose unites them. Meanwhile faculty appointments and reappointments were recommended by me, and acted upon by the Board, with the same ultimate goal in mind. Student admissions, while the technical requirements were left unchanged, have been constantly subject to one consideration: that the matriculant should understand in advance, as completely as possible, what a liberal education is, what its high utility is, and precisely what utilities it declines to serve. The faculty have given constant thought to the problem of student activities and to the sort of community life that would support a genuine liberal arts curriculum. It is obvious that true learning cannot go on in vacuo. Should it attempt to do so, the result I should expect would be the kind of intellectualism which our generation blindly fears and fumblingly denounces. For the intellect feeds on sem~e experience, only some of which can be supplied by a laboratory. Its habits are related to moral habits. It requires the support of the imagination. On the other hand, the college activities which have grown up in recent decades, bear the anti-intellectual characteristics of the period during which liberal education has decayed. In their present form, therefore, they not only fail to support liberal education ; they actually compete with it and destroy it. Intercollegiate competition in athletics is a case in point; and once we were sure it could not be subordinated to the purpose of the College, we abolished it, in order to clear the decks for an athletic system that would give that purpose the support it should find in physical sport and bodily skills. That it might have the support of the fine arts as well, the College developed an extensive musical program. Finally, these vitally important considerations of what extra-curricular activities could do for the curriculum itself have led to a constant re-examination of the physical plant in order that its advantag2s might be fully exploited in terms of the main issue. . ' �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 11 The external relations of the College involve, as in the case of other colleges, three concentric rings. There is the Board of Visitors and Governors, to whom the College administration is responsible but who cannot from geographical and other considerations participate fully in its daily life. There are the graduates of the College, who likewise cannot participate fully but who do not share the same burden of responsibility for its affairs as do the Board. And there is the general public, without whose understanding the College cannot serve well the purpose for which it was founded. I have deemed it my duty to keep the Board more fully informed of the day-to-day work of the College, than boards commonly are, if only because of the necessity that they help the faculty interpret the College's purpose to the general public. In the case of our graduates, a Baltimore radio station has made it possible ·for me to discuss the work of the College monthly for more than two years now, at least with those of our graduates who live in the Maryland area; and this courtesy has exempted me from the pleasant but, in terms of time, costly duty of visiting localities where our graduates have settled, in order to satisfy their proper desire to know what the College is doing. In the case of Board, graduates, and general public alike, it has seemed to me imperative, if the College was to use properly the leadership which has fallen to it, that our purpose be stated and restated, constantly and in as many different ways as ingenuity might devise. With that obligation in view, we have followed a few simple rules on what colleges term their public relations. We have never sought publicity, on the grounds that it is an irresponsible and dangerous medium of communication. We have tried to answer all questions, carefully and fully, whether they were put by other teachers or by journalists. We have tried deliberately to inform accurately those persons whose understanding seemed most likely to forward the ultimate purpose of the College. If this constant reference of all decisions to the aim of developing the intellectual powers of our students sounds doctrinaire, even to members of the Board, I can but remind the Board that this accusation is an essential feature of the terrain through which we must pass if we would win our objective. �12 REPORT OP THE PRESIDENT It has been a long time since an American college of liberal arts restated the ageless purposes of liberal education in definite fashion. In the midst of indefinite talk, any definite assertion always sounds doctrinaire. Meanwhile, I think I detect two imminent dangers to the success of our common educational enterprise. · On the one hand, from being "an interesting educational experiment" St. John's is beginning to look like a model to the thousands of teachers and laymen who have written the College approvingly. Unless its true purpose is constantly reiterated, I predict that the means it has chosen to employ will be mistaken for ends, and copied as ends, by other institutions, with results I need not attempt here to describe. On the other hand, precisely because a clear vision of the end we seek has created within the College means which are impressively vital, precisely because teaching and learning in it have become so extraordinarily exciting, we too run the daily risk of mistaking our educational means for ends; we too will emerge from the strenuous struggle of these years to the complacency of an apparently permanent victory; we too will go the way of all :flesh and forget that the prize for what we seek to achieve is not awarded here. Against that all too human fate we have no other safeguard than singleness of purpose. I have tried to recall to the minds of the Board as well as to the minds of us who are teaching at the College, what that purpose is, in the light that has been shed upon it by our common service to it. STRINGFELLOW BARR. Annapolis, Maryiand, April, 1940. \ �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 13 APPENDIX A First Year SCHEDULE OF READINGS BY YEARS Mathematics and Languages and Science Literature Liberal Arts Hippocrates Plato Homer Aristotle Euclid Herodotus Lucretius Nicomachus Thucydides Aristarchus .IEschylus Archimed~:s Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes Plutarch Lucian Second Ytar Tacitus Virgil The Bible Justinian Dante Burnt Njal Song of Roland Chaucer Villon Cicero Plotinus Augustine Bonaventura Thomas Aquinas Nicholas of Cusa Apollonius Ptolemy Galen Copernicus Galileo Descartes Grosseteste Third Ytar Cervantes Shakespeare Milton Rabelais Corneille Racine Moliere Calvin Spinoza Francis Bacon Hobbes Locke Berkeley Hume Kepler Harvey Gilbert Newton Huygbens Leibniz Boyle Kant Schopenhauer Hegel Peacock Boole De Morgan Bentham Clifford Mill James Freud Poincare . Hilbert Russell Fourier Lavoisier Dalton Hamilton Faraday Maxwell Joule Ostwald Darwin Virchow Bernard Gal ton Mendel Cantor Dedekind Riemann Lobachevski Gauss Veblen ~ Young Erasmus Montaigne Montesquieu Grotius Fourth Ytar Gibbon Voltaire Swift Goethe Rousseau Adam Smith American Consti~ tution Federalist Papers Malthus Marx Fielding Zola Balzac Flaubert Thackeray Dickens Ibsen Dostoevski Tolstoi �Literature Homer .IEschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes Lucian Horace Virgil Bible Dante Burnt Njal Song of Roland Chaucer Villon Cervantes Shakespeare Milton Rabelais Racine Corneille Moliere Erasmus I Montaigne Voltaire Swift Goethe Fielding Zola Balzac filauben Thackeray Dickens Ibsen Dostoevski Tolstoi Philosophy Plato Aristotle Lucretius Cicero Plotinus Augustine Bonaventura Thomas Aquinas Nicholas of Cusa Spinoza F. Bacon Hobbes Locke Berkeley Hume Kant Scbopenhaver Hegd Bentham. Mill Poincare James History and Social Science Herodotus Thucydides Rlutarch Tacitus Justinian Montesquieu Grotius Spinoza Calvin Hobbes Gibbon Locke Rousseau · Galt on Bentham Mill Freud Adam Smith American Constitution Federalist Papers Malthus Marx Mathematics Euclid Nicomachus Aristarchus Apollonius Archimedes Ptolemy Descartes Newton Leibniz Peacock Lobachevski Gauss Hamilton Fourier De Morgan Boole Riemann Cantor Dedekind Hilbert Russell Veblen & Young Natural Science Hippocrates Aristarchus Archimedes Ptolemy Galen Grosseteste Copernicus Galileo Kepler Harvey Gilbert Newton Huyghens Boyle Leibniz Lavoisier Fourier Dalton Clifford Faraday Darwin Maxwell Joule Ostwald Virchow Bernard Mendel Galt on Freu<l James Laboratory Laboratory (three hours per week for four years) Graphical Construetions Instruments Crucial Experimen ts Concrete Problems (Presented and brought up to date in Laboratory Manuals) (J l' > C/J C/J ;:; n> ..., ~ > (") (") 0 ~ CJ zCl > ro ...., 0 tTl l' tTl (') ..., < tTl C/J c:O:l t.... tTl .., (') $:: ;:i.. .....J ...., rn ~ C/J ro tT1 z 0 ~ co �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 15 APPENDIX C BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES ON THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM ST. JOHN 'S REVIVAL. Time Magazine, July 19, 1937. EXPERIMENT, by Charter Heslep, Washington Daily News, July 28, 1937. A COLLEGE EDUCATION FROM 117 BOOKS, by Louis M. · Lyons, The Boston Sunday Globe, September 13, 19 3 7. BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS IN EDUCATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Talks, October, 1937. Reported from an address given over the Columbia Broadcasting System. EDUCATION BY "BOOK LEARNING," by Thomas R. Henry, The Washington Star, December 5, 193 7. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING , by W. A. P. Martin, The Commonweal. December 31, 1937. A CRISIS IN LIBERAL EDUCATION, by Scott Buchanan, The Amherst Graduates' Quarterly, February, 1938. Reprints available. CONCERNING THE NEW PROGRAM AT ST. JOHN'S, by R. Catesby Taliaferro, The Maryland Club Woman, February, 193 8. THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE PROGRAM, by Richard F. Cleveland, The Daily Record, Baltimore, Md., March 23, 1938. ST. JOHN'S EXPERIMENT TO RECLAIM A LOST HERITAGE, by George Bull, S.J., America, April 23, 1938. ARISTOTLE IN ANNAPOLIS, by Donald Slesinger, Survey Graphic, June, 1938. A COLLEGE REBELS, by Stringfellow Barr, The Key Reporter, Phi Beta Kappa News Magazine, Autumn, 1938. BACK TO THE CLASSICS, by Philip S. Marden, The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, October, 193 8. ALL QUIET AT ST. JOHN'S, by Francis Beirne, "Our Educational Correspondent," The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 4 , 193 8. THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM, by Stringfellow Barr, The Virginia Spectator, December, 19 3 8. Reprints available. THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM, in Today and Tomorrow, by Walter Lippmann, appearing in 165 newspapers. December 27, 1938. Reprints available. JOHN DOE GOES TO ST. JOHN'S, by Stringfellow Barr, Progressive Education, January, 1939. FROM ST. JOHN'S TO MARK HOPKINS, by C. J. Wilgus, The Journal of Higher Education, January, 1939. EDUCATORS STRIVE FOR "FREE MIND," by Hedley D'c;;;a"~;;:Th~ Washington Post, January 15, 1939. �16 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT A Series of Four Articles on The St. John's Program by Lee McCardeU, The Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23, 24, 25, and 26, 1939. THE CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION, by Mortimer J. Adler, The Social Frontier, February, 1939. HUTCHINS OF CHICAGO, Part I, "The Daring Young Man," and Part II, "The Flying Trapeze," by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Maga· zine, March and April, 19 3 9. SOCRATES CROSSES THE DELAWARE: St. John's College and the Great Books, by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, June, 1939. Reprints available. THE ART OF LIBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Free America, Sep· tember and October, 1939. Reprints available. BACK TO FIRST. PRINCIPLES, by Scott Buchanan , Survey Graphic; October, 1939. TOW ARDS A DISCIPLINED MIND, Address by Stringfellow Barr, Pro· ceedings of the Head Mistresses Association of the East, November 10-11, 1939. THE ENDS AND MEANS OF GENERAL EDUCATION, Addre58 by Stringfellow Barr, Proceedings of the Fifty· Third Annual Convention of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Novem· her 24·25, 1939. Reprints available. THE TRAINING OF A FREE MIND, by Stringfellow Barr, Catholic Digest (Condensed from Free America), December, 1939. THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL AT ST. JOHN'S, by John S. Kieffer, TheClassical Journal, December, 19 3 9. THE ART OF LIBERATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Characte.r and Citizen· ship (Reprinted from Free America), January, 1940. HOW CAN WE BE TAUGHT TO THINK, 1. "Back to First Principles." by Scott Buchanan in Democracy's Challenge to Education, Farrar ~ Rinehart, 1940. A PLAN FOR AMERICA, by E. B. White, Harpers Magazin.e, February, 1940, pages 331-332. THE CLASSICS: At St. John's They Come Into Their Own Once More, Life Magazine, February 5, 1940. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 18 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Supplement to the Bulletin of St. John's College, April 1940 Description An account of the resource Supplement to the Bulletin of St. John's College, "Report of the President." Published in April 1940. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bulletin_Supplement_1940_April President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/01b1d47c0f05eee78567066f8d5d8034.pdf 83d4cc818672d970b545a0d704a265df PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Supplement to the Bulletin ANNAPOLIS, APRIL, Founded as King William's School, 1696 MARYLAND 19 3 9 Chartered as St. John's College, 1784 �Cop ies of this Report may be had on request. Address: THE REGISTRAR St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Third Printing �Board of Visitors and Governors Chairman, DR. ROBERT M. HUTCHINS, President, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Vice-Chairman, DR. THOMAS PARRAN, JR., Surgeon General, U. S. Public Health Service, Washington, D. C. Secretary, RICHARD F. CLEVELAND, Baltimore Trust Bldg., Baltimore, Maryland, Lawyer. DR. AMOS F. HUTCHINS, 1227 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore, Maryland, Surgeon. EDWIN WARFIELD, JR., Editor, The Daily Record, 15 E. Saratoga Street, Baltimore, Maryland. FRANCIS PICKENS MILLER, Pickens Hill, Fairfax, Virginia. PAULL. BANFIELD, Headmaster, The Landon School for Boys, Edgemoor, Washington, D. C. ROBERT 0. BONNELL, President, The Public Bank of Maryland, 15 E. Fayette Street, Baltimore, Maryland. STRINGFELLOW BARR, President, St. John's College, · Annapolis, Maryland. CLARENCE W. STRYKER, Professor Emeritus of History, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. COLBY M. CHESTER, Chairman, General Foods Corporation, 250 Park Avenue, New York City. HAROLD F. LINDER, Member of firm of Carl M. Loeb 8 Company, 61 Broadway, New York City. DR. SCOTT BUCHANAN, Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. BEARDSLEY RUML, Treasurer, R.H. Macy 8 Company, Broadway and 34th Street, New York City. HERVEY ALLEN, "Bonfield," Oxford, Talbot County, Maryland, Author. DR. WILLIAM J. FRENCH, Director, Anne Arundel County Health Department, Annapolis, Maryland. The Governor of the State of Maryland, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Delegates of the Maryland General Assembly and the Judges of the Maryland Court of Appeals are ex officio members of the Board. �4 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Report of the President Now that almost two years have passed since the St. John's Program was launched, it seems both possible and desirable that I render to the Board a more careful report of progress to date than has hitherto been made. The Program was designed to guarantee that there should again exist in America a college of liberal arts dedicated wholeheartedly and with singleness of purpose to furnishing young men with a liberal education, education of a sort which many American parents have been seeking for their sons in vain. We also hoped and believed that if St. John's College met this responsibility, other colleges of liberal arts would be heartened to meet it too. The response the Program has met among members of other college and university faculties in this country would not, I suspect, have been forthcoming a decade ago. But one thing has acted in our favor. The hour through which our civilization is passing is a dark one compared with the period during which our liberal arts colleges began to whore after strange gods ; and the darkness and uncertainty have reminded thinking men that these colleges are responsible for transmitting our civilization from one generation of men to the next. The crisis in world affairs has illumined the crisis in liberal education. Our primary task, however, was to set our own house in order. To do this, we had to make sure that every. decision the College made, in whatever sphere, should be made in the light of our single purpose. To envisage that purpose clearly and with constancy, our faculty have had to envisage likewise the kind of man St. John's must graduate if it is to meet squarely the responsibilities it has freely assumed. The fact that even our largest and wealthiest institutions are no longer graduating men of this kind was not significant, because these institutions have no longer a clear and single purpose in mind. It will be well to state here and now what sort of man this ideal graduate of St. John's is, before I report on the progress made towards that ideal by the undergraduates who have been �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 5 following the St. John's Program. For if these young men are not steadily approaching this ideal graduate, then we are failing and we should know it now. We cannot derive comfort where other colleges can, merely from the fact that our undergraduates are healthy and contented. Thanks to the elective system, our colleges have largely assumed towards their students the attitude a well-run department store assumes towards its customers. But St. John's has reverted to an earlier college pattern in assuming towards its undergraduates very much the attitude a doctor assumes towards his patients. It is offering them professional skill. But a good doctor's objective is not to .offer alternative nostrums for headache or fever, but to guide the patient towards achieving bodily health. And the task of St. John's College is a no less responsible and professional one: that of guiding its undergraduates towards intellectual health, intellectual health which, incidentally, will affect profoundly their moral and physical health as well. Let us suppose that one of the sophomores at St. John's, now nearing the end of his second year of the St. John's Program, stands before us on graduation day in June, 1941. Let us further suppose that in his case the Program has achieved its maximum success. What will such a man be like on that date? He will be able to think clearly and imaginatively, to read even difficult material with understanding and delight, to write well and to the purpose. For four years he will have consorted with great minds and shared their problems with growing understanding. He will be able to distinguish sharply between what he knows and what is merely his opinion. From his constant association with the first-rate, he will have acquired a distaste for the second-rate, the intellectually cheap and tawdry; but he will have learned to discover meaning in things that most people write ·off as vulgar. He will get genuine pleasure from using his mind on difficult problems. He is likely to be humorous: he will certainly not be literal-minded. He will not be a trained specialist in anything; but he will be in a better position to acquire such specialized training, whether in law, medicine, engineering, business or elsewhere, more quickly than it can be acquired by even the best American �6 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT college graduates today. For he will know how to apply his mind to whatever he wishes to master. His appetites and his emotions will be under his control. not because he has had "character training" in the Hitler Youth or the Avanguardia but because he knows the reasons for selfcontrol, and, because of those reasons, has deliberately acquired the powers of self-mastery. Will he be a "success"? Well, he will on the whole be unlikely to make his million because a million is not readily made except by those who sacrifice to its making the very things this future graduate of St. John's will have learned to value more than wealth. On the other hand he will be likely to earn a good livelihood, if only because he knows how to use his head and has learned how to work during the very years which most college boys spent learning to loaf and dodge. When he is not working, he will be able to distinguish between leisure and idleness. He will be eminently practical, not because he "took" practical courses in college, but because he will have acquired the rare intellectual capacity to distinguish means from end. He will have learned to locate the problem, resolve it into its parts, and find a relevant solution. He will, in short, be resourceful. He will be concerned to exercise a responsible citizenship and he will be as much concerned with his political duties as with his political rights. He will cherish freedom, for himself and others, but it will be not merely freedom from concentration camps; it will be freedom from ignorance and passion and prejudice as well. For, in a quite genuine sense, he will himself be a free man. He will know something of the world he graduates into, not in the sense merely of a current events contest; but because he will know the background and development of the political institutions and economic practices he confronts. He will even have means of understanding the movements in contemporary thought. And he will be familiar with the basic scientific concepts that underlie modern technology. Not only will he be better prepared than his contemporaries to enter business or a professional school. Not only will he be �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 7 better prepared to fulfill his obligations as a citizen. He should make a better friend, a better husband, a better father : free men do. He will in short be better prepared to live; and, when his hour · comes, whether through illness or civil disaster or in an army trench, he will know better how to die: free men do. A glowing portrait? Yes, and it would be a remarkable achievement for a college of liberal arts actually to graduat e such a man. But any college of liberal arts that attempts less is betraying its trust and is doomed to graduate successive classes whose members less and less resemble this glowing portrait. It is to produce this sort of man that St. John's is operating. Whether it ever attains this standard is not important here. What matters is whether the work the sophomores and freshmen are actually doing is the sort of work that leads steadily, and as rapidly as may be, in that direction. I think it is. Such work used to ·be done in our colleges of liberal arts: it is being done now at St. John's. The race knows, or should know, by experience what kind of men such work produces. But in order to judge the success of the St. John's Program this month, we would do well to look at the students in it, to look at the work they have already done and at what they are doing, and to see how far these actually existing undergraduates have progressed towards the ideal graduate we have just imagined. The St. John's Program has been frequently referred to by the press as a "novel educational experiment."· It was, of course, not novel at all; what was novel was the elective system which has grown up in our colleges during the past few decades and confused the purpose of the liberal arts college. Nor was it an experiment. Those responsible for developing the Program were convinced that the perpetual experimentation wh ich has characterized our colleges during this century has been reckless, irresponsible, and professionally unethical. The St. John' s Program was not introduced to discover whether a student w ould benefit by reading Plato and Galileo and Shakespeare, more than through reading contemporary textbooks about these writers and the ideas they dealt with. On the contrary, there was quite enough experience within the tradition of liberal arts education to enable an educated man to reconstruct a well -rou nded curriculum. �8 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT St. John's therefore abolished the elective system and put in its place a four-year all-required curriculum. Its basic requirement would be the reading, and discussing in seminar, of a hundred or so great books, the classics of our civilization, from the Greeks to the present. Some of these books deal directly with the liberal arts themselves, the arts of thinking, of reading, of writing, of reckoning. Others are magnificent examples of the successful practice of those arts. Appendix A of this report gives the list of these great books arranged by student years. Appendix B gives the same list arranged under the headings commonly used in a departmentalized elective system. An understanding of these books is the prime goal of the student during his four years' training. But to supplement his efforts, other teaching devices are used besides the seminar. Once or twice a week, he hears a formal expository lecture, a lecture in which the speaker makes no effort to talk down and in which the stude.nt' s obligation is not to take notes but to understand . Five times a week, in small classes or "tutorials, " the undergraduate studies language, although the language he studies varies each year. Five times a week he studies mathematics in the same way, beginning with Euclid's Elements of Geometry . Once a week, for three hours, he works in a scientific laboratory. This laboratory is mathematical and mechanical the first year ; physical, the second; it is a laboratory of physical chemistry, the third; of biochemistry, the fourth. It is closely correlated with the scientific works in the list of great books. St. John's is probably the only liberal arts college in America which requires four years of laboratory work of every student. T h e regimen here outlined continues for all four years for every student in the College. Unlike the elective system, it does not permit the student to ignore subject-matters he finds difficult : it ch allenges him to find out , under competent guidance , why subjects he thought "uninteresting" are actually nothing of the sort. He is not allowed to exploit his eccentricit ies and peculiarities, or his "personality" as it is· now frequently called, by cherishing his lamenesses and blindnesses and intellectual deformities. He is encouraged to think of his weaknesses as weaknesses and to set about correcting them as speedily as possi- �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 9 ble. He is encouraged to think of freedom, not as freedom to be ignorant, but as the trained capacities of his mind that will free it for any task. It was possible, and necessary, to lay down this curriculum before approaching the special problems of teaching staff and student body. This statement of course sounds doctrinaire to those who believe that, for him who seeks a liberal education, one subject is as much worth studying as another, one book is as much worth reading as another, that civilization is a matter of automobiles and radios, that we live in a brave new world, that our ancestors have nothing to teach us, and that it is cowardly not to start from scratch. St. John's is determined not to start from scratch, but to give its students access to the accumulated intellectual capital of their civilization, to see that they come into their cultural heritage, and to redeem them from the intellectual bastardy in which the average college graduate today rejoices. But a college, in addition to having something worth teaching, must have those who teach it; and these should be properly qualified. One of the most intelligent comments one ordinarily hears on the St. John's Program comes to us in the form of a troubled question: "This is undoubtedly what students should be getting in college; but where do you find men capable of teaching it?" It is a good question. It recognizes that, except for a few elderly men, there are no longer teachers in America who themselves possess a basic, general education, who indeed possess their cultural heritage. For our faculties are composed of men who are themselves the maimed products of a too-early specialization and therefore victims of the higher illiteracy. Even the elderly men, while frequently possessed of a genuine culture on the side of the humanities, have rarely assimilated to that culture the intellectual experience of our civilization which we call the scientific revolution. Where, then, get teachers capable of guiding students to these buried treasures? The simplest answer is that St. John's College has today the strongest faculty in America. Every American college or university faculty may be divided into those who wrote the books which the student is required to read and those who teach orally, �10 'I REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT into those whom we may call the authors and those whom we may call. not invidiously, the talkers. In other colleges the talkers do the teaching, and an increasing proportion of the authors are other talkers. talking members of neighboring college faculties. Both faculty groups are roughly of the same calibre, those who wrote the textbooks and those who give the lectures. At St. John's this is not true. The authors have been carefully selected from the writings of twenty-five centuries, selected for their clarity, their profundity. and their teaching capacity. This year's freshmen have been taught by such well known men as Plato. Thucydides, Aristotle. Aeschylus, and Euclid. The sophomores. who had already been taught by these men last year. have been listening to Tacitus, Plotinus, Dante, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ptolemy, Leonardo, and Copernicus. Next year they will "study under" Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere; Calvin, Francis Bacon, and Locke; Kepler, Harvey, and Newton. In their senior year and for their benefit Gibbon, Adam Smith, Marx, Bentham, James, Freud, Lavoisier, Darwin, Mendel, and other moderns will join our faculty. To aid them in understanding these great teachers. we have a " talking" faculty of teachers who do not preten4 to be as good as, or bett~r than, the authors they assign their students to read- a freq uent and justifiable pretension in most colleges today-but who conduct seminar discussions, tutor in language and mathematics, lecture rarely, supervise laboratory work, and, like the students, learn from the "authors" whom the whole College studies. As in other colleges, the talking faculty is on our pay-roll; the authors are not. The arrangement has proven workable. We of course face one constant danger: because of the bad academic habits which we members of the talking faculty have acquired from the current educational system, we display an intermittent tendency to usurp the functions of the author faculty, to substitute ourselves for them, to stand in their light when they are working, to over-interpret and even sometimesGod save the mark!- to patronize them a little. But then, we are the product of a system we are attempting to replace and we try manfully to curb our pedantry and pride. In an ordinary college course today, this is not the case. The best courses are usually built around the personality and intellectual interests of a professor. whose lectures are supported by a textbook manual. �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 11 Such a professor is likely to admit that the textbook manual he assigns and quizzes on is both boring and trivial. But he is convinced students <::an read nothing better: in fact they have difficulty "getting" this! In such a situation, the teacher's capacities limit the pupil's, and the quality of the reading causes dry-rot in both. Our author faculty have more than met their teaching responsibilities. Despite their differing intellectual backgrounds, they have transcended time and place, they have been clear expositors, imaginative artists, humble fellow.workers with us talking teachers and with the undergraduates. It is of course because of them, and not because of us talkers, that I report to the Board that our total faculty is by all odds the strongest in America. I ought to add that although some of our authors still teach at many American colleges it is not necessary in these . colleges to take courses under them. At St. John's one must study under all of them, and 411 have proven worth studying under. Even with our main faculty requirements brilliantly met, . there has still remained the problem of the talking staff, who fulfill a genuine function, even though with more humility than at our sister institutions. For unquestionably, the treasures our authors had written were for our generation partially buried. We needed men who wanted to help our students dig them up. · The best that we could do, the best indeed that could be done, was to call for volunteers, volunteers for a treasure hunt, remembering for our comfort that this treasure hunt has never wholly ceased during the intellectual history of our Western civilization. We were fortunate in that the faculty of St. John's College was already a better-than-average faculty, and freer than most faculties from the racketeer aspects of so-called research, racketeer aspects that have been fostered by the print-or-perish policies of our college and university administrations. We added to our faculty, in the summer of 19 3 7 and again in the summer of 1938, enough men who had already started the hunt aggressively elsewhere to plunge at once into active instruction, and we invited the rest of the faculty to join us and go to school again. During the session of 19 3 7 -3 8 Dean Buchanan held a �I2 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT faculty seminar for the reading, or re-reading, of the great books. During the current session the majority of the faculty have helped teach freshman seminars. At times we have doubtless been guilty of reading these books with the narrowed gaze of the specialist, seeing in the books only those things we have been taught by secondary works to see. We are, after all, professors; and this is 1939. But the cure for pedantry has, I think, worked steadily and well. Our faculty is at least better prepared to teach the books on our list than any other American faculty would be: there has been that much headway anyhow. And our teaching capacities and versatilities are increasing rather than diminishing. Some members of our faculty, who felt themselves less adapted to this task than to the teaching of a specialty in a college department, withdrew last June, and several are withdrawing at the end of this session. The twenty-six who will be with us next session are extraordinarily well fitted for the arduous task that confronts us. We remember always that this task is indeed arduous, but we remember also that the real teachers of our undergraduates are the great minds of the past two thousand years, through the written works they left for men like us to read. They have met that task before; they are meeting it today at St. John's. We talking members of the faculty are trying to facilitate that reading, but at most we cannot hope, and should not wish, to do for the student what the books themselves can do. At St. John's today the quality of the reading steadily leads professor and student alike towards deepened understanding and improved capacities. For, while some of the books read at St. John's are difficult, none of them is either trivial or boring. In short, the routine undergraduate teaching at St. John's, instead of interrupting and stultifying the teaching staff, is steadily improving it. It is indicative of the renaissance of learning that the College has undergone that faculty members who have not studied mathematics since they were boys and who, in some cases, had hoped never to open a mathematical work again. have recaptured and developed their mathematical skills; while a number of them set to work for the first time on Greek and mastered it. The constant ideal of the faculty is that every man on it should eventually have read all the books on the St. �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 13 John's list, regardless of his chosen field. In assigning teaching tasks, special capacities are naturally exploited; but it is assumed that the right to teach a part of the Program depends ultimately on a knowledge of the whole of which one's part is a part. Only those who are familiar with the sort of specialists our present educational system has burdened us with, will know what courage a faculty must exhibit to set itself such a goal, or how excessively rare such courage is in the academic scene today. And what of the students? For this report is primarily concerned with the actual progress made to date by the actual students following the St. John's Program, progress which we are measuring in terms of the ideal St. John's graduate pictured above. Let it be said first that our initial assumption, or perhaps central faith, has been vindicated in daily practice. It is a credo without which it would appear idle to found, endow, or administer colleges of liberal arts. Yet we have in recent decades founded, endowed, and administered colleges without that credo ; and we have administered without it those which our ancestors founded with it. The medieval statement of that credo was that man has a rational soul and that it is therefore possible to appeal to his powers of reason, to awaken them, to move them, and to transform them into virtues or habits of the intellect. Note that the credo extends to all men and was intended to include even the as yet unborn American freshman. These powers may be stronger in some than in others; they may be blocked temporarily by fever or intoxication or permanently by certain diseases. But in the normal American . freshman they exist and may be developed. All of which leads to a second declaration of faith: that it is possible to teach. It is even possible to teach not merely the contents of a railway time-table, but how to think better, that is how to use the liberal arts freely and well. This is a tremendous article of faith , and one which the whole drift of American higher education has for two decades denied. Its denial would alone account for the rapid decay of liberal education in our country; and it is worth observing that, shortly after teachers lost the faith that it was possible to teach their pupils how to think better, they began to doubt whether it was really possible to teach an undergraduate anything, or anything �14 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT of consequence. For where liberal learning droops, other forms of learning, even ordinary technology, sooner or later flag and fail. The students in the St. John's Program have read the books listed in Appendix A on schedule time to date. There were minor revisions of the freshman list this year over last year. The list is subject to constant revision and will be kept so. The performance in the freshman seminars has improved steadily, although, as in the case of last year's freshmen, there is wide variation in skills and in knowledge. On the whole, the freshmen are already exhibiting what the sophomores naturally exhibit to a much higher degree, the ability to speak clearly, to argue on the point, to make and understand distinctions, to distinguish abstractions from their concrete applications. On the whole, their capacity for sharp and orderly thinking has increased more rapidly than their powers of imagination. To attack this latter problem, we have had recourse in the field of extra-curricular activities to work in dramatics, to poetry reading, to music. The sophomores have improved considerably in their power to write; it is too early to make the same claim for the freshmen. The organization of the language tutorials is such as to develop that power. In the fall, the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a language are quickly mastered. For the freshmen the language is Greek, ·the language in which were actually written the books they are reading in English translation. For the same reason, the sophomores rapidly acquire, or refurbish, their Latin. In the winter term both ar~ constantly exercised in translations, literal, free, and stylistic. This, of course, is an ancient device for learning how to write one's mother tongue, a device that a number of our greatest English and American writers used. In the spring term, the students write original themes in English on the subject-matters contained in the great books. This rotation from a new language, through translation into English, to original English composition is beginning to develop writing powers, but we have still a long way to go. Fortunateiy, the most striking characteristic of the Program, superficially observed, is the acceleration with which learning proceeds. This has been perhaps best exemplified m the improved understanding of mathematics. \ �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 15 The sophomores, and to some extent even the freshmen, have developed powers of work extraordinary in American undergraduates. They have developed a courage in tackling really difficult tasks that promises well. At the beginning of the year our freshmen were quite candid about never having learned to work, and the Program pushed some of them pretty hard. But they are getting on top of their work, or most of them are, very ·satisfactorily. In a community where it is taken for granted that everybody is trying to learn, it is remarkable how many people end by learning. For me personally the most interesting experience the Program has yielded has been to watch the intellectual awakening, at different periods of the College session, of different members of the group. This intellectual awakening is sometimes so conspicuous as to be a matter of College gossip. It is as if a given undergrad~ate had come out from under anaesthetic. I think most of us had had a similar experience in watching an undergraduate suddenly cash in, in terms of athletic skill, on long drills and practices; it is even more exciting to watch when it occurs above the eyebrows. Students suddenly find themselves understanding lectures, where such lectures were before mere jumbles of unfamiliar words. They suddenly find themselves understanding the books in an unaccustomed fashion. And they show their new understanding in the way they use words themselves. There are no unique or "novel" teaching methods employed. All our methods, whether discussion, lecture, laboratory, or recitation and drill, have already been proven by centuries of experience. But it is almost unique, I think, in the contemporary educational scene, to find a faculty and a student body unconcerned w ith "credits," decreasingly concerned even with grades-old habits cling-and increasingly concerned with learning. The individual oral examination which each student is given three times a year by a group of his instructors has helped greatly to keep things in focus. Equally powerful, I think, has been a device we stole from English university practice, the device which British undergraduates term a "don-rag." During the past two years we have adapted it more nearly to our needs . It is w orth describing here. �16 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT About a week after the oral examination, the student appears individually before a group of his instructors, a group of which his seminar leader serves as chairman. Each of the student's instructors reports briefly to the seminar leader on the student's capacities and deficiencies. The student's case is discussed among the instructors but in his presence. Occasionally, his advice may be sought. The purpose of the don-rag is not to read the student a curtain lecture or to give him his "grades"-the giving out of grades on this occasion is, on the contrary, discouraged. The don-rag is a clinic, at which the objectives are diagnosis and prescription. Its effect has been to help the student locate his own intellectual diseases and take responsible action, with the advice and aid, but not with the evangelical incitement or law-court recrimination, of the faculty. I have discussed in this report the educational purpose of St. John's College; its ideal product; the subject-matter it uses, the qualifications of its faculty, the progress of its undergraduates towards the College's ideal graduate. I wish to touch on two other topics before closing. First, something should be said of the learning environment which the College, always with its eye on the single purpose it has set itself, is slowly creating. This environment has involved a renovation and adaptation of its plant on the one hand and, on the other, the evolution of a community life capable of supporting real intellectual growthin short, the development of college activities, as they are commonly called, which will enrich instead of impoverishing, support rather than substitute. In the case of the plant, we have made some headway; but the growth of the student body which promises to begin next September means that we must start planning immediately how to get the fullest and best use out of our buildings and grounds, and what sort of buildings to add first. This planning is now going on. In the case of the community life, that also is slowly taking form. Our biggest strides this session have been the provision of more suitable common rooms in which the social life of the College community might find a focus. These common rooms include a College bookshop, a coffee-shop, a music room, and a reading room. Our next immediate move must be the provision of more adequate athletic facilities. As the Board will recall, last Fall the Col- �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 17 lege abolished intercollegiate athletics as of June, 1939, and is engaged in planning an expanded athletic program on an intramural basis. The reasons for taking this step were stated in one of my monthly radio addresses to our alumni, which I include in this report as Appendix C. But the immediate effect of this step, necessary as it was, is to precipitate the problem of expanding, as rapidly and as carefully as possible, the athletic facilities of the College. St. John's, like its sister institutions, has for many decades been "meshed in" with a system of intercollegiate athletics. This meshing in has had two effects, here as elsewhere. Its first effect was to orient athletic policy away from the pleasure and physical profit of the student and towards the pleasure of the public and the supposed profit of newspaper pub- · licity for the institution. The second effect sprang out of the first: it has proven impracticable here as elsewhere, through socalled intra-mural programs, to focus the mind of the staff on the real problem of providing sports faci1ities for all the students. Even where institutions have controlled the financial resources to do both things at once, the psychological orientation has proven fatal. Now that the red herring of intercollegiate schedules has been removed, we can see with painful clarity how much must be done if the Co Hege' s athletic facilities are to invite every incoming freshman to use his body as well as his mind, to discover the zest of playing outdoor games as well as the zest of holding one's own in rigorous discussion, to acquire physical skills as well as intellectual ones, to enjoy complete health of body and mind. We are determined that this problem shall be fully met. The word publicity suggests the second and last point I would touch on before closing. We Americans rarely do anything without an awareness of its "publicity value." Sometimes that awareness proves fatal to our proposed end. In the case of the St. John's Program, it was obvious from the start that any attempt to get back to fundamentals in a liberal arts college would turn the attention of the public towards that college. Our constant care has been to reduce the harm that irresponsible publicity, beyond our control, might do . On the whole, we have been moderately successful. Although much that has been written about the College-and it has for the past year been more written about than perhaps any other educational �18 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT institution in America-has been silly and inaccurate, a good deal has been intelligent and restrained. But the real task of "public relations" remains to be accomplished, because it is a long-term task. It cannot be avoided: the relations of a public institution are naturally public. But in the case of St. John's, I do not think those relations will be properly discovered or defined until teachers in the secondary schools, both private and public, learn what ·the College is doing and guide the parents of their boys into learning it. Most of the newspaper publicity which has deluged the College has probably done as much harm as good. But if St. John's College is to attain its maximal usefulness to the State and the nation, the sort of usefulness envisaged by those who wrote its eighteenth-century charter, it must depend on the secondary school teacher and on its own graduates to act as intelligent consultants towards those students who propose to enter it. Meanwhile, the novelty, or apparent novelty, of the Program condemns it to wide discussion, unintelligent as well as intelligent, irresponsible as well as responsible. For the information of the Board, I attach to this report, as Appendix D, a partial bibliography of articles about the St. John's Program or mentioning it in significant context. These articles and the more diffuse publicity of general newspaper mention have apparently ensured that we shall have more applicants for next year's freshman class than we shall feel justified in admitting, but even the best of these comments are a less efficient medium than the secondary school teacher for guiding to St. John's the young man who really seeks a liberal education. As to what sort of young man this should be, I shall have more to say to the Board in the future. Suffice it to say now that it is the policy of the College, with regard to its admissions, to avoid too great a homogeneity in terms of geographical distribution, social background, economic status, or even in terms of apparent intellectual capacity. The description I gave of the don-rag earlier in this report indicated , I hope, that a good don-rag is not concerned with recriminations or felicitations but with pointing out unsolved problems and undeveloped potentialities. I should like to suggest here that the College administration, the College faculty , and �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 19 the Board of Visitors and Governors are equally liable with our undergraduates to frequent and thorough don-rags. We ought to ask ourselves constantly whether we are acting with all the wisdom and energy of which we are capable. I think it is true that St. Jol: n's today offers a young man a sounder liberal education than any other American institution, but its educational program is capable of much greater development than it has attained. For two reasons it must attain it. First, it must give the young men who enter it the best and strongest and soundest possible training with which to meet the vicissitudes of human life. Secondly, it already occupies in the minds of many men in academic life the position of model. If it would serve as a good model, for the restoration of liberal learning in America at an hour when liberal learning was never more sorely or more clearly needed, it must not content itself with a second-best solution at any point. I invite the Board to join the faculty and the present student body in meeting that challenge fully, a challenge that must appeal to all free men everywhere who love the sources of their own freedom and of the freedom to which their children are by nature heirs. STRINGFELLOW BARR. Annapolis, Maryland, April, 1939. �20 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT APPENDIX A SCHEDULE OF READINGS BY YEARS First Year Languages and Literature Liberal Arts omer Plato Herodotus Aristotle hucydides Lucretius iEschylus Sophocles Euripides I'Aristophanes Plutarch Lucian / Mathematics and Science Hippocrates Euclid Nicomachus Aristarchus Archimedes Second Year Tacitus Virgil The Bible Justinian Dante Burnt Njal Song of Roland Chaucer Villon Cicero Plotinus Augustine Bonaventura Thomas Aquinas Nicholas of Cusa Apollonius Ptolemy Galen Copernicus Galileo Descartes R . Grosseteste Third Year Cervantes Shakespeare Milton Rabelais Corneille Racine Moliere Erasmus Montaigne Montesquieu Grotius Calvin Spinoza Francis Bacon Hobbes Locke Hume Kepler Harvey Gilbert Newton Huyghens Leibniz Boyle Fourth Year Gibbon Voltaire Swift Goethe Rousseau Adam Smith American Constitu ti on Federalist Papers Malthus Marx Fielding Zola Balzac Flaubert Thackeray Dickens Ibsen Dostoevski Tolstoi Kant Schopenhauer Hegel Peacock Boole De Morgan Bentham Clifford Mill James Freud Poincare Hilbert Russell Fourier Lavoisier Dalton Hamilton Faraday Maxwell Joule Ostwald Darwin Virchow Bernard Galt on Mendel Cantor Dedekind Ri emann Lobachevski Gauss Veblen ~ Young �Literature Homer .IEschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes Lucian Horace Virgil Bible Dante Burnt Njal Song of Roland Chaucer Villon Cervantes Shakespeare Milton Rabelais Racine Corneille Moliere Erasmus Montaigne Voltaire Swift Goethe Fielding Zola Balzac Flaubert Thackeray Dickens Ibsen Dostoevski Tolstoi Philosophy Plato Aristotle Lucretius CicerO-Plotinus Augustine Bonaventura Thomas Aquinas Nicholas of Cusa Spinoza F . Bacon Hobbes Locke Hume Kant Schopenhauer Hegel Bentham Mill Poincare James History and Social Science Herodotus Thucydides Plutarch Tacitus Justinian Montesquieu Grotius Spinoza Calvin Hobbes Gibbon Locke Rousseau Galt on Bentham Mill Freud Adam Smith American Constitution Federalist Papers Malthus Marx Mathematics Euclid Nicomachus Aristarchus Apollonius Archimedes Ptolemy Descartes Newton Leibniz Peacock Lobachevski Gauss Hamilton Fourier De Morgan Boole Riemann Cantor Dedekind Hilbert Russell Veblen ~ Young Natural Science Hippocrates Aristarchus Archimedes Ptolemy Galen R. Grosseteste Copernicus Galileo Kepler Harvey Gilbert Newton Huyghens Boyle Leibniz Lavoisier Fourier Dalton Clifford Faraday Darwin Maxwell Joule Ostwald Virchow Bernard Mendel Galton Freud James Laboratory Laboratory (three hours per week for four years) Graphical Construetions Instruments Crucial Experimen ts Concrete Problems and (Presented brought up to date in Laboratory Manuals) () r ). en en ;:; n .., ~ 0 z ). () () 0 :;i::I 0 z0 '"O>.., '"Otr! z 0 0 r :x .., t:C trl trl () < trl en c tJj c..... trl .., () ~ ). ..,..., m :;i::I rn ~ �22 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT APPENDIXC ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE RADIO PROGRAMS . SERIES II, No . 3 By STRINGFELLOW BARR, President From Station WFBR in Baltimore I propose to discuss an important step which St. John' s College has taken within the past ten days. Many of those who are listening to me, incl uding alumni members of the College, will by now almost certainly have been told by somebody that the College administration has abolished athletics. T hose who believed this statement should, it seems to me, be gravely distu rbed. I think I ought promptly to disabuse them. To keep the record straight, I shall therefore first state the facts. Athletics have not been abolished, bu t the College has decided that after the close of the present academic session athletic facilities will be increased and at the same time will be placed on a strictly intramural basis. I am explaining tonight why significant changes have been announced in the athletic system at St. John's, to take effect next September; but in explaining these changes I am discussing liberal education in a democrac y. The system of intercollegiate athletics which has developed during the past twenty years will no longer support the prime purpose of a liberal col lege. I suppose I ought to have foreseen this. But I didn ' t . Certainly, there have been enough Carnegie reports, enough magazine articles by can did wri ters like John Tunis to convince men of my generation that we are sheer sentimentalists and ignoramuses if we suppose that intercollegiate athletics are the same thing we remember from twenty years back. They do things better now, with rose bowls, cotton bowls, and sugar bowls; with costly equipment, transcontinental journeys, and big money ; with costly coaches and costl y quarterbacks. I knew all this. The first thing I learned about athletics on arrival at St. John's was that we were booked to play our unnatural rivals, Army and N. Y. U.-in an effort to keep down the high cost of modern athletics by earning a good "gate." But still I thought it might be pos,ible to adapt intercollegiate athle tics to educational ends, to pare down schedules, to decline with thanks such games as Army and N . Y. U ., and to protect the coaches from criticism if they lost games by refusing to hire athletes . I was mistaken. The thing that taught me I was mistaken was what happened when intercollegiate athletics collided with a curriculum that really required work . Yet I should have known this by analogy. I had known countless students who w ithdrew from intercollegiate athletics when they entered medical or other p rofessional w ork . They withdrew because they knew, aloµg w ith everybody else, that you have to study to earn an M.D ~ while ordinarily you don't have to study to earn a B.A. The undergraduate fills in his idle time with athletics, which at its most professionalized is a lot better thi~g to fi ll idle time with than some other things I know. But suppose there isn' t an y idle time? Suppose there is just enough leisure time for healthful outdoor gam ~ s? �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 23 Then every athletic trip becomes a crisis and not what is known as an "athletic excuse. For students who are really doing serious work know without being told that you can't "make np·' for something you should have learned but didn' t, by using the magic word "excuse." An excuse may square you with the Dean. It won't convert ignor~nce into knowledge. There is no reason on this round earth why securing a liberal education in an undergraduate college should be a less serious business than acquiring a medical education in a medical school. But if it is a serious business, then it had better steer clear of another very serious business, indeed a highly organized "big" business, intercollegiate athletics. For this big business has its own exigencies: those who won' t meet them had better keep out. That big business substitutes spectator psychosis for actual part1Clpation, cheering sections for playing teams, an orgy of sports-goods equipment for costumes fit to have fun in, large business staffs with long-term schedules for the old-time impromptu challenge of natural antagonists, monotonous physical drill for learning to play by playing, pressure from fellow-students for zest to play, the exhibitionism of star performers for the satisfaction of playing well because it is more fun to play a game well than badly. The sum total of these things is hysteria, lost motion, the death of the amateur spirit, and an athletic system that competes with study instead of supplementing and strengthening it. We have all known these things for years, unless we have been ostriches or Rip Van Winkles. But I repeat, they don't prove fatal so long as undergraduate education is run in low gear. In fact, I should insist again that, so long as education is run in low gear, these things are better than idleness. But there is something better still, and that something is amateur athletics, amateur athletics of a quality no college can achieve so long as it is meshed in with the new kind of athletics, the big-business kind. The educational program now going on at St. John's must have the support of amateur athletics. It must have it, because amateur athletics is rich in terms of health, recreation, skill, and co-ordination. To get that support, it will expand its intramural athletics. More varieties of sport will be offered and more facilities. Our colleges are often abusively called country clubs. I want to see St. John's offer the sort of athletic facilities a good country club offers. Every game we now play we shall continue to play, except that the six-man football we started this year will replace the standard game. In addition we want to expand water sports, with particular emphasis on sailing. The alumni have already given us one sailboat ; we shall acquire five more. Finally, it is essential, not only that games be played at the College but that they be well played. A tutor with wide athletic experience will be placed in charge, but he will need a number of student assistants. To secure good assistants, we propose to offer athletic scholarships. In my own limited experience, this will be the first legitimate use to which athletic scholarships have been put by an American college. I think you may rest assured there will be plenty of excellent candidates. I hope you will help me find the best candidates. �24 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT Sooner or later, I hope sooner, the present system of semi-professionalized intercollegiate athletics will hang itself. When it does, the problems that caused us to take our present stand will disappear. When it does, we shall doubtless play games with other colleges as naturally as such games were once played. Meanwhile athletics at St. John's will be for the student, not the student for athletics. �ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 25 APPENDIX D BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES ON THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM 1937 ST. JOHN'S REVIVAL, Time Magazine, July 19, 193.7. EXPERIMENT, by Charter Heslep, Washington Daily News, July 28, 1937. A COLLEGE EDUCATION FROM 117 BOOKS, by Louis M. Lyons, The Boston Sunday Globe, September 13, 193 7. BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS IN EDUCATION, by Stringfellow Barr, Talks, October, 193 7. Reported from an address given over the Columbia Broadcasting System. EDUCATION BY "BOOK LEARNING," by Thomas R. Henry, The Washington Star, December 5 , 193 7. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING , by W . A. P . Martin, The Commonweal, December 31, 1937. 1938 A CRISIS IN LIBERAL EDUCATION, by Scott Buchanan, The Amherst Graduates' Quarterly, February, 1938 . Reprints available. CONCERNING THE NEW PROGRAM AT ST. JOHN'S , by R. Catesby Taliaferro, The Maryland Club Woman, February, 1938. THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE PROGRAM, by Richard F. Cleveland, The Daily Record, Baltimore, Md., March 23, 1938. ST. JOHN'S EXPERIMENT TO RECLAIM A LOST HERITAGE, by George Bull, S.J., America, April 23 , 1938. ARISTOTLE IN ANNAPOLIS, by Donald Slesinger, Survey Graphic, June, 1938. A COLLEGE REBELS . by Stringfellow Barr, The Key Reporter, Phi Beta Kappa News Magazine, Autumn, 1938. BACK TO THE CLASSICS, by Philip S. Marden, The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, October, 19 3 8. ALL QUIET AT ST. JOHN'S, by Francis Beirne, "Our Educational Correspondent," The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 4, 1938. THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM. by Stringfellow Barr, The Virginia Spectator, December, 193 8. Reprints available. THE ST. JOHN'S PROGRAM, in Today and Tomorrow, by Walter Lippmann, appearing in 165 newspapers. December 27, 1938. Reprints available. �26 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 1939 JOHN DOE GOES TO ST. JOHN'S , by Stringfellow Barr, Progressive Education, January, 1939. FROM ST. JOHN'S TO MARK HOPKINS, by C. J. Wilgus, The Journal of Higher Education, January, 193 9. EDUCATORS STRIVE FOR "FREE MIND," by Hedley Donovan. The Washington Post. January 15, 1939. A Series of Four Articles on The St. John's Program by Lee McCardell. The Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23. 24, 25 . and 26, 1939. THE CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION, by Mortimer J . Adler, The Social Frontier, February, 19 3 9. HUTCHINS OF CHICAGO. Part I. "The Daring Young Man," and Part II. "The Flying Trapeze," by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine. March and April, 19 3 9. SOCRATES CROSSES THE DELAWARE: St. John's College and the Great Books. by Milton S. Mayer, Harpers Magazine, June, 1939. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 27 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Supplement to the Bulletin of St. John's College, April 1939 Description An account of the resource Supplement to the Bulletin of St. John's College, "Report of the President." Published in April 1939. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1939-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bulletin_Supplement_1939_April President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d56472bee849689e65af0727ff6c23b2.pdf c1e0f74487fd83cde4e4e33c1c44d80a PDF Text Text PRESIDENT'S REPORT ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE cA.nnapolis, vrcaryland �To the Students, Alumni and Friends of St. John's College: The report to the Visitors and Governors of St.John's College which forms the main part of this folder has been sent to you because it not only reports upon a fiscal year which has been very satisfactory, but also because it gives the main facts as to the real estate in Annapolis about which a great deal of misunderstanding exists. This year, it is hoped, will not only mark the end of the long series of years during which the College has operated at a deficit, but will mark the beginning of the time when the College will annually operate with a balanced ~udget. Since the report was written, the aquisition of the renowned Ashhurst Classical Library (partly as a gift and partly by means of the regular Library appropriation) has been consummated; and this collection, formed by three generations of scholars, has greatly enriched the excellent College Library. In general, the position of the College is being strengthened and improved, and next year is looked forward to as one which should be highly successful. Cordially yours, DOUGLAS H. GORDON President �Bulletin of ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE IN ANNAPOLIS VOLUME III NUMBER 3 AUGUST 1933 Published four times a year by St. John·s College, Annapolis, Maryland. Entered as second-class matter January 31, 193 l at the Post Office at Annapolis, Maryland, under the Act of August 24, 1912. �To the Visitors and Governors of St. John's College: Dear Sirs: I am happy to report that the long series of years during which the College has operated at a deficit is now at an end, and that St. John's College has operated so as tc finish with a surplus the fiscal year terminating on June 30, 1933. It is with a feeling of deep gratitude to students, to members of the Faculty, and to members of the Board that I make this statement, for it was by the cooperation of these three groups that it was possible to achieve this result, so vital to the College at present and for the security of its future. When I assumed the presidency of St. John's College two years ago, the obvious and striking difficulty of the College, which had become a serious danger, was this continuing operation at a substantial annual deficit. Without going into details, except to state that all non-cash items have been conservatively written off in no case by less than 75%, I report for comparison the annual results of operations as follows: 1928-1929 ... . .... .. ... . ... $109,095 .93 (deficit) 1929-1930 . . .. . ............ 102,758.70 (deficit) 1930-1931.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39,750.81 (deficit) 1931-1932.... . ..... . ...... 23,145.70 (deficit) 1932-1933.. .. .... . ..... . . . 1,834.23 (surplus) As I pointed out in my report of last year in explaining the loss for 1931-1932, the Board appropriated $15,10 5. 00 for salary increases, new appointments, and for a new library appropriation for that year. In addition, the then business manager did not include in the estimates submitted to the Board an essential expenditure of $6,000.00 necessary to install a completely new heating system, which could no longer be deferred. So that, even during the year 1931-1932, when placed on a comparative basis with the previous year, the College was operated substantially without deficit. It might be well to add that since I have been at the College, although one assistant coach, two administrative officials, and three administrative employees have been dismissed without being replaced, not a single laborer has been dismissed, and every member of the teaching staff has annually been reappointed for the following year. �Faculty salaries have been maintained at the 1929 level, with numerous substantial increases in 1930, and with several smaller increases in 1931, until the current year when the salaries of the faculty were reduced 18. 50%, leaving them substantially above the 1929 level in purchasing power and in many cases in actual amount of money paid. The same cut was made in the salaries of all other members of the staff, except in one case where a larger cut was made. Considerable improvements have been made in the equipment of the College. In addition to the new heating plant previously referred to, a completely modern heating system has been installed in the Brice House (made necessary by a controversy with the Carvel Hall Hotel as to the effect of a contract to heat, which will ultimately have to be settled by litigation). Office equipment has been bought when necessary, and always with the idea in mind that the greatest ultimate satisfaction will be derived from the best equipment that can be had. Pinkney Hall has been completely repainted, so that its brick work is in condition to require no more attention for another generation. At the same time, the interiors of both Pinkney and Randall were completely repapered. The second great difficulty which faced the College in 1931 was the extraordinary relationship of the College with the Davis-Smith Realty Company, a corporation which, with the assistance of the College and the active labor of the College officials and Board members, had acquired not only a large number of buildings immediately adjacent to the College but also over four hundred acres of land across College Creek. Contrary to general understanding, the Brice House, Hammond-Harwood House, Laws House, and Pinkney House are not owned by this corporation, but by the College. It was very generally thought that the owner of the stock of the Davis-Smith Company had acquired the real estate in question for the purpose of donating it to the College, with the exception of one piece which was similarly believed to be intended as a gift to the State. In 1932, it became known that the stock of the Company had been pledged by its owner in a manner inconsistent with the belief originally entertained. After extended negotiations, the disastrous leases into which the College had been persuaded to enter were cancelled as of January 1, 193 3, and new leases at proper rentals were entered into for the three buildings which the College needs. �The third difficulty of the College in 1931, occasioned by the fact that for two years there had been no president, was the uncertainty as to the division of authority in the College. With the adoption of the policy of holding regular faculty meetings, and with the smooth functioning of faculty committees, this situation has now been obviated. The Library of the College has been enriched by the bequest of the library of Samuel F . Garner of the class of 1871 ; and a group of valuable scientific and reference publications was given to the library by Mrs. Marcus Benjamin in memory of her husband, Doctor Marcus Benjamin (LLD., 1910). The gift by Mrs. Benjamin of a number of bookcases and pictures has added greatly to the utility and attractiveness of the faculty offices in the basement of Woodward Hall. At the present moment negotiations are under way for the acquisition of the well known Ashhurst Classical Library, and should, within the next few weeks, be completed. A Baltimore library which has often been described as the finest library in the State of Maryland has been promised to the College as a bequest by its present owner. In addition to the fact that the excellent Faculty of the College has not been reduced as has been the case in practically every institution of learning in this country, several new instructors have been employed. This action makes the Faculty today the largest in the history of the College. During the past year, the graduates of the College have continued to win the scholarships for research work which have in recent years been in such large numbers awarded to them, and which constitute the best sign of the scholarly standing of the College. From what has been said it may be seen that the greatest difficulties of the College have been eliminated. St. John's College may now look forward to a secure and bright future. Respectfully yours, DOUGLAS H. GORDON President � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bulletin of St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource <em>The Bulletin of St. John's College</em> was published quarterly by St. John's College from 1932 to 1968. It was distributed to alumni, faculty, and staff. Some issues include the Report of the President, the official statement of the St. John's program, the Catalogue, the Polity of the college, or the Dean's Statement.<br /><br />The publication was continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/12" title="The College (1969-1981)"><em>The College</em> (1969-1981)</a>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Bulletin" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=37&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in The Bulletin of St. John's College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 6 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bulletin of St. John's College in Annapolis, August 1933 Description An account of the resource Volume III, No. 3 of the Bulletin of St. John's College in Annapolis, "President's Report". Published in August 1933. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1933-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bulletin_volIII_no3_1933_August President's Report Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c41993923c47055cbecd9ef62ce64a74.pdf 8d892c1e74db268c1b36eb63a01c32a0 PDF Text Text Thursday September 14 2023 The St. John’s Collegian A Gadfly Publication From the polity Opinion: On the Honor Code For those who missed it, Annapolis Dean Susan Paalman has recently announced plans to implement a student honor code to combat academic dishonesty. While I am highly skeptical of any innovation in the running of the St John's, this one certainly merits consideration. In an institution which professes to be not merely a community, but a true polity, it is appropriate that students should think of themselves as citizens with a real stake in the wellbeing of the College. Since a sense of personal honor and integrity is vital to meaningful citizenship, any system which promotes it should be beneficial to the health of the polity. There is, of course, the matter of enforcement. It might well be asked whether people who are prepared to cheat on their assignments will be phased by lying about doing so. To this problem I propose a two-pronged solution. 1) the creation of a body whose sole purpose is the investigation and punishment of honor code infractions. Since (to my way of thinking) the reason for the creation of an honor code is to foster good citizenship and self-governance, this body would ideally be composed of students or feature students in an executive capacity. Self-government is both an individual and communal exercise. Cont. on Page 2 Vol. I Issue 2 Printed Thursdays in Annapolis City plans to build path on college creek College Creek Connector would Link Bike Infrastructure Across Annapolis, Cross our Campus Claiming that College Creek is underutilized, the City of Annapolis seeks to ‘activate’ it. The city’s plan is to connect King George Street to Calvert Street via a boardwalk along College Creek, which would pass under Rowe Blvd and along the edge of St. Anne’s cemetery and connect to the trailhead of the West East Express. On May 9th, Anna Dayton and I spoke with Andrew Romiti, who heads the Campus Planning Committee, about this. The city reached out about 10 years ago, but little came of it, and only reached out again about two years ago. The initial proposal given by Mayor Gavin Buckley and city officials Special Projects/Arts Coordinator Brian Cahalan and Chief of Comprehensive Planning Eric Leshinsky was to cut across what is currently the gravel road between the lower field and water, which was rejected by the College as it would cut the campus in two and fully invite the outside world to come in unhindered. The city went back to the drawing board and in June 2022 came back with the current proposal to accommodate the objections of the College: an elevated boardwalk above the water which would be separated from the campus by a gate. This also met opposition from the College, particularly over concerns about access to the creek from the boathouse. After these two rejections, Mr. Romiti assumed the proposal was dead, This Week in Seminar Freshmen: - 9/14: Homer, Odyssey, XVII–XXIV - 9/18: Plato, Meno Sophomores: - 9/14: Bible, Psalms (See official list for selections) - 9/18: Bible, Amos; Jonah; Isaiah 40–55 Juniors: - 9/14 Milton, Paradise Lost, I–III - 9/18: Paradise Lost, Books IV; V; VI Argument only; VII Argument, 1–39; VIII Seniors: - 9/14: Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Unhappy Consciousness; Reason - 9/18: Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Conscience and The Beautiful Soul Friday Night Lecture: Vital Exuberance: Goethe on What Plants Want by Daniel Carranza Page 1 until only about a week before our meeting, when the city reached out again, showing renewed interest. Knowing now who was in charge and wanting to understand their perspective, we sent emails to Mr. Cahalan and Mr. Leshinsky, who both responded by inviting us to a community meeting on May 30 at the People’s Park on Calvert St. A notable proposal offered by Mr. Romiti during these meetings with the City was to cut around Prince George’s St., but the Mayor let us know this was rejected as it would have too much opposition, with many businesses on Main St. relying on the parking here. At the May 30th meeting, we saw this situated within the City’s broader plan to make Annapolis less reliant on cars, their specific goal with the C.C.C is to have it connect the Baltimore-Annapolis trail to downtown Annapolis, also planning the ‘West-East Express’, a bike path parallel to West St. We had a number of concerns, including the safety of the ducks, light pollution, loss of isolated space, the creek becoming unsafe and the potential inability for freshmen to collect lab samples, which we weren’t able to get an in-depth response on from the City at this meeting, so scheduled a meeting with Eric Leshinsky, one of the officials in charge for June 5. Cont. on page 2 Upcoming Events: Friday 9/15 - Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset Saturday 9/16 - 5 a.m. Homerathon, Part II - 4 p.m. Pan’s Labyrinth showing, Mitchell Gallery - 8 p.m. Sailing Under the Stars, Boathouse - 9 p.m. Gimme Gimme Disco, Great Hall Tuesday 9/19 - 7:30 p.m. Homer Trivia with Mr. Nelson, General Hartle Room Wednesday 9/20 - 4 p.m. Reader’s Theater, Agamemnon, General Hartle Room �Thursday, Sep 14 2023 St. John’s Collegian Vol. I. Issue 1 Honor Code College Creek (Cont. from page 1) (Cont. from page 1) In order to be truly effective, however, this formal rules-based system must be accompanied by an informal relationshipbased system which reinforces it. Therefore, we would also need: 2) a vigorous culture of shame regarding academic dishonesty. If the creation of a polity which values honor and integrity is to succeed, it needs to be unpleasant to be dishonorable. It needs to be costly to lack integrity. While I recognize that this may be a somewhat controversial position, a more full-throated defense of the importance of shame will have to wait for a sequel. He gave answers to a number of these concerns: any lighting would be dark sky compliant, the College would be able to close a gate which would give access to the bridge at any time, and they’ll need environmental safety certifications for any plan, but the core of the proposal still has its inherent tradeoffs, like the loss of a quiet, isolated space on campus. He estimated that the City is two years from breaking ground, so despite having 65% funding, it’s still a ways off, also shown by our interview with President Demleitner, who said that the President’s office hasn’t received any Rendering of the proposed College Creek updates in a year. Connector, provided by the City of Annapolis William Marchman Augustus Pananas Student attends two seminars in one night “Bear in mind, Sancho, that one man is no more than another, unless he does more than another.” – Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote Mr. Peter Quinn (Junior Undergraduate, Resident Assistant, Greenwave Captain, Accomplished Cook, Loyal Friend) attended his first seminar, which was scheduled from 4-6, without much fanfare. After all, attending the first seminar of the year is nothing remarkable. DC Update This week, the St. John’s Delegate Council met twice, on Sunday and Tuesday. The council elected the following representatives to the Student Committee on Instruction: Sophomores Millie Ransohoff and Ian O'Donnell, Juniors Jackson Green and Jack Domanski, and Seniors Hannah Fodor and Dolan Polglaze. They have also continued to hear club budgets, which will be detailed in a budgeting update next issue. Miscellanea However, when he sat down with the author of this short article after his seminar, neither knew that by the simple act of attending a 46, he had begun a great adventure. The author informed Mr. Quinn that he was in fact scheduled to attend her seminar, which was scheduled from 7:30-9:30. After a quick check of mysjc, he confirmed this. His schedule had changed since the morning. A friend of mine recently sent me a manuscript he discovered, claiming he had unearthed it from the depths of the Underquad. I am always skeptical of such things, especially since I have yet to see conclusive proof of the Underquad’s existence, but having read its contents, I begrudgingly accepted they may be worthy of publications. They include a series of Other students might be compelled to aphorisms, attributed to ‘the Sage of remedy the mistake in the next Quixote Gorman Street,’ which I shall publish here seminar on Monday, figuring that they had weekly. done their due diligence for the day. However, Mr. Quinn is not like other “The poor turn into a multitude; the rich turn students. He approached this gamely, one into a magnitude. Either way, there is no might say with a kind of knightly valor, room for human quality.” shrugging his shoulders and proclaiming, … “Then I guess I’ll just go to two seminars.” This was submitted anonymously: And indeed, he did, and participated well in both of them, a quiet act of heroism that They walk to the quad, deserves to be known by the college. If the quote that this article opens with is true, And step on the college seal. then Mr. Quinn may be more than all other men – all other students – on campus. - They shan’t graduate. Georgia Green Page 2 About the St. John’s Collegian The St. John’s Collegian is the weekly newspaper of St. John’s College Annapolis. We work to bring quick and timely coverage of important events going on, to help develop a more informed student body. If you’re searching for more in-depth investigations and reporting, as well as essays, art and culture, check out the Gadfly, our affiliated publication, which is published once every three weeks. Want to submit an article? We always need more writers, whether for opinion or reporting! Submissions for news articles should be between 300-400 words, while opinion should be kept short at 200 words. Just email eanicholskaufman@sjc.edu with your article, and we will work to get it in print! Longer form articles and more indepth exploration of ideas should go to the Gadfly, which accepts submissions at djnathan@sjc.edu. Contributors for this issue: El’ad Nichols-Kaufman, Editor William Marchman Augustus Pananas Georgia Green � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Collegian</em> Description An account of the resource A student newspaper of St. John's College. <em>The St. John's Collegian</em> began publication in 2023 and is affiliated with <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/16"><em>The Gadfly</em></a>. <br /><br />Published weekly on Thursday, with the exception of weeks <em>The Gadfly </em>is published. <br /><br />Earlier publications with the title <em>The Collegian </em>and <em>The St. John's Collegian </em>are available in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/26"><em>The Collegian Collection</em></a>.<br /><br />Click on Items in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=69&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">The St. John's Collegian Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJCCollegian Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 2 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's Collegian, September 14, 2023 Description An account of the resource Volume 1, issue 2 of the St. John's Collegian, published September 14, 2023. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-09-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College holds the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJCCollegian_vol1_issue2_2023-14-07 Student publication The Collegian The Gadfly https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/5a02da212645df85bcbf5161dbdee104.pdf 357841f65c9cd31c045d9e7b64cb50b4 PDF Text Text Thursday September 7 2023 The St. John’s Collegian A Gadfly Publication Collegial welcome This is not because of a lack in the existing campus publications. The kind of quick, short and to the point reporting that I feel the polity needs to be informed simply does not belong in the Gadfly. There needed to be another space for reporting on campus, ideally one coordinated with the Gadfly’s extensive resources. I brought this up to some other people on the Gadfly staff, and from our discussions, the Collegian was born as a weekly newspaper, with short articles and easy formatting, to best reach the whole polity. Informing the polity, however, can only work with your help. We need you, dear reader, to help, by contributing articles for our publication. It doesn’t take much; only 200-300 words on a topic you care about. With your help, we can build a more informed, more engaged, and closer connected Polity. Printed Thursdays in Annapolis Board of Visitors and Governors Holds Summer Meeting Greetings from the editor of the College’s newest publication At the Gadfly, I’ve long worked to report on the affairs of the college, from momentous decisions to day-today events. In doing that, I’ve found that delivering this news in the necessary timely manner is often a challenge. Vol. I Issue 1 New Leadership, Enrollment, AI and Fundraising Discussed The Board of Visitors and Governors meeting this summer was both one of transition and stability. It was the last board meeting for our dean, Joseph Macfarland, who will be succeeded by Susan Paalman, and Associate Dean for the Graduate Institute, Emily Langston, who will be succeeded by Brendan Boyle. Additionally, it was the last meeting for board chair Ron Fielding (A70), who will be replaced by Warren Spector (A81). The meeting painted a mixed view of the college’s financial status. The finance committee reported that there will be a deficit of around $1.1 million. Fielding noted that tuition revenue is stagnant, while the cost of building repairs and upkeep continues to rise, putting more weight on the college’s philanthropic efforts. In the past decade, the college’s tuition revenue has declined by $10 million, only a third of which was covered by increases to the endowment. In a more positive light, Nora Demleitner, Annapolis President, celebrated the completion of the College’s Freeing Minds campaign, which raised $326 million, exceeding its initial goals, while noting that “we do need to focus clearly on the challenges of the future.” Chief among those is enrollment. The Annapolis campus is facing what Demleitner called soft enrollment: “We are meeting targets, barely,” while Santa Fe is failing to those targets. “Low enrollment means stagnant class size, which means stagnant tuition, which means low compensation for faculty and staff.” This Week in Seminar Freshmen: - 9/7: Homer, Odyssey I-VII - 9/11: Homer, Odyssey IX-XVI Sophomores: - 9/7: Bible, Leviticus 11, 18-20; Deuteronomy - 9/11: Bible, Samuel I, II; Kings I, 1–4 Juniors: - 9/7: Pascal: Pensées (See official list for selections) - 9/11: Pascal: Pensées (See official list for selections) Seniors: - 9/7: Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, The Truth of Self-Certainty (177 only), Lordship and Bondage (178–196) - 9/11: Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Stoicism and Skepticism (197–206) Friday Night Lecture: Document Your Optimism: Mexico Writing Humor by Álvaro Enrigue Page 1 Part of this enrollment problem stems from the national demographic cliff, with there being less college age students every year in the US. While there are more international students applying than ever before, that does not entirely make up the drop in domestic students. To recruit a larger share of that shrinking pool of domestic students, Demleitner highlighted national surveys of high school students that said they are concerned with four things when looking for a college: prestige, career outcomes, strength of the academic program and belonging to a community. She claims that to recruit more students we must work on building a meaningful life and a meaningful career for students by funding internships for every student, build resources for different career paths and highlight internships and scholarships. Demleitner also emphasized the importance of data to these efforts. “We need to overcome our reluctance to… build measurements and collect data.” The college will be hiring a Chief Information Officer based in Santa Fe to do this and help target the four things high school students are said to care about. An additional part of this effort is partnerships with other colleges and universities for joint degrees and programs, starting with a partnership with Johns Hopkins. Cont. on page 2 Upcoming Events: Saturday 9/9 - 5:30 a.m. Homerathon, front steps of McDowell - 11 a.m. Auditions, Importance of Being Earnest, Studio Theater. - 3 p.m. Mitchell Museum Workshop: Making the Front Page of “End of Times.” Mitchell Museum, RSVP required. - 8 p.m. Contra Dance, hosted by the Folk Life club, Great Hall - 8 p.m. Sailing Under the Stars, hosted by the sailing team, Boathouse. Wednesday 9/13: -2:30 p.m. Career development office open house, Mellon 124 �Thursday, Sep 7 2023 St. John’s Collegian Special dispatch: Vol. I. Issue 1 The Vital Importance of Being Earnest Announcement from KWP of a new show coming very soon to a campus near you The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is coming to the FSK at the end of this semester. Set in England at the turn of the century, the three act comedy centers around John (Jack) Worthing and his friend and tormentor, Algernon Moncrieff. Both end up donning the name “Earnest” in an attempt to win the affections of their respective love interests. The lie goes poorly and misunderstandings ensue. The entire state of affairs is presided over by the dower and imposing Lady Bracknell; Miss Prism, an austere and nervous governess; and the Rev. Canon Chasuble, a bumbling parish priest. While there was an audition on Tuesday, September 5, there is another round of auditions this coming Saturday, September 9, from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. Callbacks will be held in the evening on Sunday, September 10th. All are welcome to audition with no prior experience nor prior sign-up needed. Those interested in auditioning should check their e-mails for further information. The characters of Algernon and Lady Bracknell will be gender blind when cast. While Algernon is not usually genderblindly cast, Lady Bracknell often is. Playing Lady Bracknell have been such notables as Sir David Suchet (Poirot), Geoffrey Rush AC (Pirates of the Caribbean), and Dame Judi Dench (Cats). All College Soccer BVG Meeting game a rousing Cont. from first page start to athletic Beyond the issue of year To kick off the school year the college gathered for an age-old tradition, the Means Versus Extremes soccer match. The “Means” team led by Junior intramural captains destroyed the extremes led by the Seniors intramural captains in a thrilling 63 victory. Sophomore Beeri scored twice for the Means and Sophomore Laish scored an impressive goal from outside the box. Junior Captain James Reeher (Hustlers) laced a shot from the right side for another goal for the Means. Although the Extremes lost handedly they still managed to put some points on the board, with the help of some alumni and some newcomers. Freshman Charlie made his splash scoring his first St. John's College goal, in his first game as a Johnnie. On the flip side Senior Andrew Selway tapped one in after an assist from Santa Fe graduate Sam Housley who also scored a goal of his own. This was Selway’s first St. John’s College goal. The Means of the week were Andrew Selway and Charlie who both scored their first goals and the Extreme of the week was Peter Quinn, who held down the fort in the goal. Overall, the vibes were good and everyone who came out had a great time. Lainey Rendelman recruiting new students, the visiting committee highlighted the college’s difficulties retaining students who are already here, and ways they are working to address that. Retention has improved over the past few years since the pandemic, but the college is still not on track to meet its own goals. The primary reasons students leave, however, are medical and academic, both of which the college has relatively little control over. Despite overall low retention rates, retention rates amongst Pell Grant recipients are higher than the national average, indicating that the college’s work to make itself more accessible to lower income students has been somewhat successful. Additional topics discussed at the meeting included the extensive construction occurring on both campuses, including the renovation of Campbell Hall and the bathrooms of Pinkney and Chase-Stone in Annapolis, continuing to further the college’s partnership with the United World Colleges, as well as the challenges posed by AI. Board members noted that new large language model chatbots are not yet threatening for the college, as they are not good at writing the kinds of essays we are expected to write and cannot be used in the variety of oral forms of assessment the college employs. From the polity: The play will run for approximately two and a half hours with an intermission between Acts Two and Three. The performances will fill a 7:30 lecture slot on December 8th with an additional performance at 7:30 on December 9th. The play is directed by Mr. Caleb Briggs, with Ms. Georgia Green as Stage Manager, Mr. Nichols-Kaufman as Set Designer, Ms. Keely Schrantz as Technical Director, and Ms. Magnolia Vandiver as Costume Designer. Caleb Briggs About the St. John’s Collegian The St. John’s Collegian is the weekly newspaper of St. John’s College Annapolis. We work to bring quick and timely coverage of important events going on, to help develop a more informed student body. If you’re searching for more in-depth investigations and reporting, as well as essays, art and culture, check out the Gadfly, our affiliated publication, which is published once every three weeks. Want to submit an article? We always need more writers, whether for opinion or reporting! Submissions for news articles should be between 300-400 words, while opinion should be kept short at 200 words. Just email eanicholskaufman@sjc.edu with your article, and we will work to get it in print! Longer form articles and more indepth exploration of ideas should go to the Gadfly, which accepts submissions at lbriner@sjc.edu or djnathan89@gmail.com. Contributors for this issue: El’ad Nichols-Kaufman, Editor Lainey Rendelman Caleb Briggs Do you have an opinion? We bet you do! You go to St. John’s, after all. Send short opinion pieces, around 200 words to us, and we will publish them here, anonymously or with your name attached. If you’ve always thought that what this campus needed was another way for people to voice their opinions loudly and publicly, this is it! Don’t miss your chance! Page 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Collegian</em> Description An account of the resource A student newspaper of St. John's College. <em>The St. John's Collegian</em> began publication in 2023 and is affiliated with <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/16"><em>The Gadfly</em></a>. <br /><br />Published weekly on Thursday, with the exception of weeks <em>The Gadfly </em>is published. <br /><br />Earlier publications with the title <em>The Collegian </em>and <em>The St. John's Collegian </em>are available in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/26"><em>The Collegian Collection</em></a>.<br /><br />Click on Items in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=69&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">The St. John's Collegian Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJCCollegian Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 2 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's Collegian, September 7, 2023 Description An account of the resource Volume 1, issue 1 of the St. John's Collegian, published September 7, 2023. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-09-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College holds the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJCCollegian_vol1_issue1_2023-09-07 Student publication The Collegian The Gadfly https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7ae995d93d305cc7846c502e45accea0.mp3 b402ea23b898f6b7a79e52d97d153882 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:04:25 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Moment and the Drone Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 4, 2003, by Elliott Zuckerman as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Zuckerman, Elliott Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received giving St. John's College blanket permission to make audiovisual recordings of Elliott Zuckerman's lectures, speeches, and addresses available online, and to make copies of typescripts of Elliott Zuckerman's lectures speeches, and addresses available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Music--Philosophy and aesthetics Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Zuckerman_Elliott_2003-04-04_ac Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3662b8e6f4e1530866a12610fd68a0ef.pdf 8d1bd808f3b82f25383eeb3a20ea0e13 PDF Text Text Winter 2022 ��letter from the editors Energeia has always been about collecting the art of the community here at St. John’s. We know that there is good art here and we know that you also know that. Our job is to bring all of it together in a place where it is accessible to the polity. We hope that Energeia gives you the opportunity to sit with this art; to visit and revisit it. We are excited to begin our time as editors of Energeia and hope that you will trust our hands to shape this collection for the next two years. We encourage you to find your friends who are published in this issue and have them autograph their piece! Make this magazine a memory of the time and place it was made. - Allyson and Kelly �Contents Liz Dowdy 3 ...only asses hide weakness Daniel Nathan 4 Kirkland Brand Whiskey a Go-Go Liz Dowdy 5 Sexy Grandma Collection II Aaron Shelsby 6 If I Can Tell Helen Wagner 7 Spiral Stairway to Heaven Helen Wagner 8 Almost Anonymous 9 Faeth Fiadha Aaron Shelsby 10 Cleopatra by College Creek Hain Cho 11 Three Lions for Ana-Sofia Liz Dowdy 12 Bark, bitch Liz Dowdy 12 fragments from a barking bitch Zeinep Kyzy 13 Kyrgyz girl on a horse Eli Zitler 14 Waiting on the Bench Zeinep Kyzy 15 Ennui Candyce Jones 16 In Search of God in Dreams Esther Beland 17 Hotel Kelly Kane 18 i have this dream where i’m screaming underwater Daniel Nathan 19 Grandboy Rat Zeinep Kyzy 23 Flowers Still Life �Nicholas Bellinson 24 In Memory of Rolly Phillips Henry Hills 25 The House of the Rising Sun Max Anthon 26 Io Esther Beland 27 Aaron’s Rod Hain Cho 28 Bamgashi Ornament Hain Cho 29 Fruits of Paradise Daniel Nathan 30 The End of the No Look Behind the Back Pass James Reeher 31 June Bug Riley Ferver 32 I think about my father and the way he used to drive Henry Zheng 33 Cicero, Hortensius Lysithia Page 35 Lunatic Hain Cho 36 Untitled Kai Gyorki 37 To Stay Bridget Mace 38 Castle Aaron Shelsby 39 Interview Audrey Fox 40 sketches Rory Goode 41 Somewhere I am a Chimey for an ugly black �Polish original by Marta Podgórnik (...) tylko dupki ukrywają słabość tylko dupki ukrywają słabość. ziarna nie sieją. fala podnosi się, topi ich. we śnie, kurewsko nie fair, zawodzą zawory bezpieczeństwa. wartość ma tylko to, co właśnie tracisz. w co brniesz dalej. nie będziesz miał nic, co można by ukraść, zniszczyć, nic, czym można by zabić. dasz sobie tyle czasu — stąd do tamtąd. ruszysz. w niemal każdą wiarygodną jutrzejszość. w tego boga uwierzysz, który tu, teraz, za ciebie. i wyjdziesz z tego jak spod prysznica. nago, wyzwolony z formy, pusty w treść. poślizgniesz się na kafelkach, co się zdarza — złamany ładniej będziesz wyglądał na zdjęciu. po zdjęciu z tego, powieszony na następnym, krzyż pęknie o kant sedesu. (...) only asses hide weakness only asses hide weakness. they sow no seeds. the wave rises, drowns them. in sleep, fucking unfairly, they let down the safety valves. only that, which you lose, has any worth. what you keep wading in. you won’t have anything, which could be stolen, destroyed, nothing, with which you could kill. you’ll give yourself so much time — from here to there. you move. in nearly every reliable tomorrow. you believe in that god, who here, now, is for you. and you’ll get out of it like from under the shower. naked, released from form, empty in content. you’ll slip on the tiles, which can occur — you’ll look prettier broken in a photograph. after being taken from this one, hung on the next, the cross Liz Dowdy | 3 �Kirkland Brand Whisky a Go Go Lubricated and dressed up in alabaster rubber soles, spattered with someone else’s Thirsty Thursday night vomit, painted in pinpricks of rinsed pantomime sick, dripped over him like Jackson Pollock’d skin. Dispensing that same old same old variety of slurred volatility with an everyman’s touch for decommissioned thinking. Doing the Twelve Step shuffle, wobble, tumble through the front door, drinking in just the same way that deadbeat painter did. Thoroughly, the alcoholic thrashed, downing swimming pools of turpentine gin, preaching the babble of practiced abuse. Paternalism-comme-chaos, steady hands don’t spill. Gulling themselves onward and toward their black diamond slope to a blacked out hell at the bottom of the hill. And they blame the existence of what or whomever they happen to neglect on bad genes too Irish, too diseased, too rare. Or otherwise, they blame it on their “Doing swell!” dad, too boring, too content, too gray-flannel suited, too square. Or else, the blame’s on their dad’s own down-bad shit dad, who’d come home slackjawed after his factory shift full of vinegar and piss, snarling, gnashing, flinging spit. Face turning Marlboro red, screaming, slurring, yelling at the children with a paddle in his hands demanding to know which to hit, until the day he finally up and decided to never, ever quit. Warm fluid, grain alcohol! rinses off the debris of daytime despair. Back again off the saddle, too lonesome to bear. 4 | Daniel Nathan �Liz Dowdy | 5 �If I Can Tell I know not where my Beatrice leads me and whether hell or heaven’s where I’m bound, but tied to her am I, we move without a sound intent on home, wherever that may be. Though we be quiet, music’s all around. There’s either holy hymns or moans of hell and oh! I do not know if I can tell. 6 | Aaron Shelsby �Spiral Stairway to Heaven I could pull a Sisyphus and push a suitcase full of hopes and dreams up an endless spiral staircase, but I’d laugh, because every time it falls, it plays the steps like piano keys and sometimes the notes make a melody. And I drag the suitcase back up thump thump thump thump So I can hear it again. Helen Wagner | 7 �Almost Winter comes, always and again, but something cannot stay which never quite made an appearance in the first place. It’s just like those words you dropped long ago onto your faded kitchen sofa like throw pillows, expectant, and my response, which has been resting on the other side of my lips for all these years. Winter comes, but Bayou City in February can never quite keep a frost. It’s soon ousted by climbing jasmine and April-sweet oleander conquering my driveway with perfume’s shadow. We, too, had that moment of autumn— not a fever-quenching cool, but a brief dip into reality (our Achilles heel), then back to the invincibility of the incomplete. Now my mind drowns in dog days, The Mississippi in the sun, stuck at the start of these long lonely summer years. Back when everything would happen, because nothing had— before unasked questions expected answers. 8 | Helen Wagner �Fæth Fiadha “Deer’s Cry” Crist lim. I unbind from myself What I have seen. Such sorrow no song has sung No writing written No painting painted No poem named. Not even this one. To watch a Father is to Learn. To lose a Father is to Love. To watch a Father lose is to Lose Hope. Falling. All one can do. All we All will do. Crist remam. Crist imm degaid. Crist innum. He blessed Him! He did His duty! In one strangled sentence He commended His son’s spirit onwards To a God felt cold by warm blood. The Hand fell Limp and unflinching. Strangled by the same Cancer We gazed, unblinking. The sign of the Cross On a forehead gone cold as The Stone rolled away– He lives! Why do we? Anonymous | 9 Crist ísum. Crist úasam. Christ with me. �Cleopatra by College Creek We walked again where nights before we walked, though closer now, and what you wore reminded me of Cleopatra. The sky was blushing, so was I, you turned and asked me how, above, the sky would seem a pinkish human cheek. Perhaps I was a witness to my own imaginings: the amorous hue of sky betraying inner wishes. The water too had turned from blue to match its mate above, and on our view we said “horizon kissed the sky”. 10 | Aaron Shelsby �Hain Cho | 11 �Bark, Bitch! words i cannot remember words that dismember reports of disharmonies reports of tired bodies like a bitch goes larking like a bitch goes barking fragments from a barking bitch fragment I One morning I will wake up and I will have killed him. In some way or the other. In my dream or in my life or in my delusion. But he will be dead and it will have been my hand holding the dagger. And his blood will cleanse me of my guilt. fragment VIII It’s snowing out and the ground is being covered up. The world is being resurfaced. And I pray that I begin to snow. 12 | Liz Dowdy �Zeinep Kyzy | 13 �Waiting on the Bench A good samaritan should pluck this spot up and arrange it so: no bushes, no old, ivy-tresteled walls propped against its land, no chatter, no smooth inclined path, and no clothes. Let a mattress be put in the scene, like a large white brick, and another mattress, a harsher one with weaker supports, with significant cold springs coming out of it by an inch on the sides and the top, so that the first bed, in an honest comparison, can’t be complained of. Someone could always say, “Just this; haven’t been shanked just yet!” Anything could be adequate then–tear down all the buildings, take the lights, and even so, long as there is one person present with a stake of ruined light quivering in their eyes. Not important who. Why criticize this? It’s fine enough as is. There is the ashy dawn smoking into a lawn, dry. A bicyclist rolls on. I ask myself what came first: the artist or the critic? A symbol that is obvious is in its obviousness, selfreferential, and so not obvious at all. A bicyclist rolls on. A wedding wanes in the cellar’s wine-laden walls. A lamplight shines on. I leave my cigarette on the lawn. 14 | Eli Zitler �Zeinep Kyzy | 15 �In Search of God in Dreams They say, “God is made of hunger, and we are made of dreams.” But, What if I am made of hunger and god is just a dream? What if I am starved and searching, yet all the plates are clean? What if there’s no end to wanting and love’s been sliced too thin? Will perhaps my own frail bones be fed to me again? Maybe naked truth lies hidden, in fair youths’ immortal sin and maybe in my searching god and dreams may yet amend the concent of Eden leaves me blinded by its grace or if I’m only dreaming chaos lingers in its wake and every fruitless study sees me shroud in willow green Surely every longing chorus must some god somewhere demean? The distance between god and eye is an untrodden sea but I would risk a trip to Sheol if a better man I’ll be If there exists a divine presence, it remains unknown to me as the errors of free will imitate captivity Molded in the light of sanctitude, yet irreverent in the flesh we, in turn, must be so similar, two are called let one confess And if high above lays heaven, as believers’ final home Then to understand the will of God, I must understand my own 16 | Candyce Jones �Hotel There are too many towels in this hotel: guest-beds sheeted with towels to imbibe the night-sweats, tablecloth-towels miraculously wine-spared. A man today left his complementary breakfast untouched as fluffy white towels leapt from his throat like a hospitable magician’s act. And their clothes are all towels now. The floors above are buckling with the weight of too many towels, sclerosing the hallways like cholesterol, boarding in every mousehole, usurping the oxygen with a smothering comfort most homely, towels pudging windowpanes, people’s torsos turning-towel, stray towels strewn across the drizzle-slicked streets below, innumerable orphans with no hotel, towels flaming in clogged electrics yet still ghost-white “and the towel was not consumed.” There are too many towels in this hotel. Esther Beland | 17 �18 | Kelly Kane �Grandboy Rat Grandma is dying. An old immigrant from the easternmost reaches of Hoboken, New Jersey who made her way—frightened and alone on a long and perilous journey across an unforgiving ocean—all the way to Newark, New Jersey. Just nineteen years of age, with only fifteen dollars in her pocket, and not speaking a lick of the language, she soon found steady work as a salesclerk at a Sears department store. She became the queen of the cash register, the czarina of customer service, the grand duchess of the return policy—a woman who wielded power with not much more than her stare and the military march clickity-clack of her patent leather high heels. She would man the floor like a field general and quickly rose through the ranks to assistant manager. Every pleated tartan skirt that came back sans ironing, every polyester suit that came back with a cigarette burn or a sesame chicken stain, every floozy and fraudster who “forgot” their receipt, she turned away as forcefully as it was final. One such customer was a wiry little man, about thirty years of age, with almost no hair left on his head and knuckles covered with tufts of darkened steel wool, who’d brought back three pairs of polyblend flared golf pants, one pair checkered, the other two plain—burgundy and burnt orange, as was the style in those gaudy and violent years at the end of the sixties—insisting that they rode up too high in the crotch. As the story goes, Grandma gave the customer the classic return policy spiel as he pleaded with her to accept the items back, his hands waving like Gilligan with a biplane flying overhead his island, face all red, and spit falling from his egg-breathed mouth, eventually drying up on the linoleum counter. Over the course of the doomed transaction, the man, reeking of desperation, started to elevate his tone, and his unmovable, emphatic persistence—his line in the sand—pitched all the way up to a shrill yelp, yelling on about the “absolute rape of ethics being reproached.” Grandma called him a “frosty little, smallpricked, mouse-brained jackass.” The transactions turned to confrontation, and at the return desk of the Sears, the confrontation escalated to altercation as they argued and argued and argued some more. After the passing of the two-hour mark, each of them exhausted, somehow sweaty, and stubborn as ever, the back and forth finally simmered down to a low boil, all energy zapped, all willpower wiped, and they exchanged jokes and quips and bits and pieces about their lives with each other. Daniel Nathan | 19 �- h They had each met their match. Their lowest-of-stakes arbitration relenting into friendly, flirty chit-chat, their back and forth ended up lasting well past dusk, and the quickly falling darkness signaled that it was time for the store to close. The pair, each of them lost in their new-found mutual connection, maintained no thought of at all of going their separate ways, even as Grandma began her final rounds of the store, checking the inventory for missing or misplaced merchandise and potential signs of theft. And the customer, having lost both all hope and all care for a refund of any sort, reckoned where a broom was and did her sweeping for her. After the fluorescents were switched off and the glass doors were polished and locked behind them, the couple stood outside under the pale blue of the unplugged neon Sears sign and greeted the emptied vastness of the wasteland parking lot, careful not to gaze at the stars so as to appear at all sentimental. So, they looked at each other instead and quickly realized they hadn’t needed the stars to look at after all. The man then invited Grandma for a drink, to which she obliged. She got a double shot of whiskey, and he got a Mai Tai with a plastic umbrella in it. They played pool and he sunk the eight ball on his third shot. She won twenty bucks off that win, and he still laughed as he lost, not to mention he never even got that refund for those pants. Well, that man became my Grandpa, who died before I was born. But now, Grandma is dying . . . and she’s propped up in a hospital-like mechanized bed, set up in the living room of her rent-controlled apartment, with oxygen tanks and a morphine drip and a nurse to feed her and change her and overall take care of her, watching her and giving her as much of a simulation of love as a contracted hospice nurse can give for fourteen hours a day. Like Grandma’s some goddamn invalid. That’s her language, not mine. That’s what Grandma would say, not me. I don’t approve of calling people stuff like that. But she can barely move her fingers more than to buzz the nurse to fetch more drugs, much less talk, and Grandma would be cursing her condition—and often is—much more venomously than just the word “invalid”—to her that term is practically a medical evaluation of a condition of reality, as is “tard,” as was “dyke,” and “idiot” and “shvatze” (an old Yiddish term—as horrible and ugly in meaning as it is phonetically—she remembered from her youth that does not bear the need to get into in more detail) for that matter. 20 �She’s in pain, alright. I hear her groans and I use my imagination to reproduce in my mind the pins-and-needle stabbing of that lecherous tumor growing like a mold from her colon outward into the rest of her organs. God, she looks awful without her wig. My whole life I knew her presence as: spine straightened, bosom pushed out towards the six-foot man in the sky, hawkish look in her evil beady green eyes, like a Gestapo officer whose job it was to double-check “the lists.” But most of all, her presence, to me, was that of the ever so slightly curled peroxide blonde hair helmet, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor hail could move even a strand of hair out of it upright and locked position. One was unsure if the piece was a wig—and if it was a wig, if it was not but a cruel joke played on some poor unassuming, likely mentally deteriorating woman by some mean-spirited hair stylists. A caricatured tumbleweed like the ones you see in those old cartoons, rolling through empty dusty main thoroughfares in the old west but those ormous, boisterous, blinding was the gaudiness of her crown: both acquiring the color and the texture—the overall essentialness—of pissed on grass after it had dried. I’m not sure how long she has left—the doctors say she won’t make it through the month. But I don’t know how much longer I can do this. This living here with her here dying. My sneaking around because she has no clue that I’ve been living here, sleeping in a linen closet during the day, with only the sound of Nurse Marta’s immaculately white tennis shoes clomping around and the steady beep of the heart monitor machine to lull me to a soft fetal-positioned sleep; lurking in the shadows, only coming out when she’s asleep and after the nurse has gone so I can find some meager rations to sustain me: old cereal, saltine crackers, cans of spam. 21 � Oh, do I struggle! I do. And how this struggle inflicts itself upon me! It’s horrid really. How long can one live under the throw covers of life, like a stowaway, a scurrying disease-ridden rat? Grandma’s the one with the disease! The only thing I’ve got is insomnia and a nervous personality. It’s me who should be receiving sponge baths from the beautiful, sweet, utterly kind-hearted nurse, having split pea soup spoon-fed to me and having my arm injected with free pseudo-heroin. It’s me who really deserves all the pseudo-love—it sure would feel real, which is all that really matters to me. Holed-up like some sort of deadbeat, freeloading drifter in here, I can’t stand one more minute of it, though I must. So tortured after all these months from breathing in the scent of mothballs and baby powder and death, and the air that feels like the inside of a mouth from the army of humidifiers Grandma’s got set up throughout this godforsaken one bedroom, one and half bath third floor walkup. I’m her blood for crying out loud, her flesh and blood. That’s why I’m hiding out here, and as long as I stay hiding, I’ve got a roof over my head and scraps of three day old Shepard’s pie. I can live, like a Rat King, but live no less. And I will live. You can know that. 22 | Daniel Nathan �Zeinep Kyzy | 23 �In Memory of Rolly Phillips Magistrae linguae latinae When Dido, I saw, set her pyre, signaling to her lost desire, a flash of that self-same Phoenix-fire blazed in your eye on newborn wings, an after-augury of things sustained by fresh imaginings— like light from a dead star that, to live, travels far, old and young; we, too, are. 24 | Nicholas Bellinson | �Ὁ Τοῦ Ἡλίου Ἀνισταμένου Οἶκος The House of the Rising Sun Ἔστιν οἶκος Νέᾳ Ὠρλεάνῃ Ἥλιος Ἀνιστάμενος νομίζεται Πέφανται δε φθορὰ ταλαιπώρων πολλῶν Νὴ Διά, γιγνώσκω αὐτῶν μ’εἶναι There is a house in New Orleans Named “Rising Sun” It has shown to be the destruction of many wretched ones By God, I know myself to be of them Ἡ μήτηρ ἀεὶ ἔρραπτεν Τὸν οἴνοπα χιτῶνα συνέρραψε Ὁ πατὴρ ἀεὶ ἐν τῷ κυβείῳ Νέᾳ Ὠρλεάνῃ ἐν My mother was always sewing She stitched together my wine-dark chiton My father was always in the gambling house In New Orleans Χρὴ δ’ ἐρῶντα κυβείους ἔχειν Μόνον τοὺς σανδάλους Μόνον δε τέλειος φαίνεται Ὅταν ἐστι μέθυστος It’s fitting for a lover of the gambling house to be holding Only his sandals He only shows forth to be complete Whenever he is drunk Ὦ, μήτηρ, λέγε τοῖς τέκνοις Μὴ πράττειν ἃ πέπραγα Τοὺς βίους διατρίβειν κακῶς Ἡλίῳ Ἀνισταμένῳ μετά Oh, mother, tell your children Not to do what I have done Waste away your lives wickedly Among the Rising Sun Τοῦ μὲν ποδὸς ἐπί τοῦ βήματος Τοῦ δ’ ὄντων μεθ’ ὁδόν Εἰς Νέαν Ὠρλεάνην νοστῶ Ἵνα λαμβάνωμαι τὸν δεσμόν With one foot being on the pedestal And the other on the road Into New Orleans I’m returning That I may pick up the burden Ἔστιν οἶκος Νέᾳ Ὠρλεάνῃ Ἥλιος Ἀνιστάμενος νομίζεται Πέφανται δε φθορὰ ταλαιπώρων πολλῶν Νὴ Διά, γιγνώσκω αὐτῶν μ’εἶναι There is a house in New Orleans Named “Rising Sun” It has shown to be the destruction of many wretched ones By God, I know myself to be of them Henry Hills | 25 �26 | Max Anthon �Aaron’s Rod Welter of tails, slit-toungéd screams smothered by a hide of scales, split-stomached Oroborus tossed out to finitude. Eden is reborn from the blood of legerdemain, serpents of recycled miracle boiling in God’s elong stomach like bread leavening “say this to Israel: I AM THAT I EAT, serration cankering Egyptian lips.” And the serpents were consumed, Godhead’s splinters down-sanded as before Mitosis, soothsayers heaving up sheep’s-blood stirred with lithe-shelled snake-eggs, Abel dying in a back-alley and Jocheved’s boys giggling like schoolgirls. Aaron’s Rod washes down the meal with Manischewitz, Muse of Eve and Adam fat with false-gods and dead firstborns. This is the bread affliction, Its crumbly scutes unshucked; these are the aspirate snarls of Creation sated; this is where the serpent dies, embodied, blunted spine-needles tickling the innards of Redeemed Temptation. Esther Beland | 27 �28 | Hain Cho �Hain Cho | 29 �The End of The No Look Behind The Back Pass Blood stained walls, The fictional quarterback caused the impact. And the force caused the skull to crack, caving in the frontal lobe and nasal bone and ripping through the connective tissue with the fictional football he threw. And all the viscera and snot and brain matter flew like a flock of Canadian geese all across the room. A promising young career of mild concussions and playoff games, a lifetime after of pride and an underdeveloped brain. Ruined, right there and then with that fictional football he threw. That was the end of that, of his mother’s Venetian blinds and his cousin’s sorry, sunken life. Well, that was the end of that. That was the end of the hierarchy between the Hail Mary heave and The No Look Behind The Back Pass. 30 | Daniel Nathan �June bug We went up to work on the tool shed, My father and I, we talked about God. The day was a big dark peach, Juicy and sweet, it coated your fingers. Making your face a sticky mess. A June bug laid out on the floor, upside down, He swung his legs, his blood orange red Body wobbling, struggling quietly. My dad sets him upright, Sending his big, bloated body on his way. Later I saw that same June bug. He was swinging his legs, wobbling again. James Reeher | 31 �I think about my father and the way he used to drive I shower in a new place and the drops come down like bricks Fresh laid. I am led into my room by a man with a beer belly. Says “Put your key on a lanyard–tote bags are a bitch.” His badge is silver. Reads SAFETY. My father wanted to go back to college, I tell the blonde boy who is screwing the lid Off another week of bummed sips of moonshine. And I let him pierce my lips because he could take what came out. Whole time I am thinking of my father and the way he used to drive: Rev the engine, Stomp. Wrap the tendrils of your hair around the leather cover of the steering wheel. Pull. And I never got my license. I wiggle around things, mainly becoming a force that moves. I dance on a table while my leg is still broken and someone says Please stop. You are going to hurt yourself. But He says if you read all the good books, it hurts you. He says if you’re reading the bible, it hurts you. He says if you paint then the smell’s gonna hurt you. Don’t date [redacted], you know that they’ll hurt you. He says if you work for the government, it will suck the life out of your soul, Rip the springs out of your bones, wrap tentacles around every corner of passion you have, Stretch it thin, Pull. So I kiss a boy and two people and a girl and a girl and look for something to love Like a hobby. I walk around this city at night Alone staring into windows of restaurants I can’t afford. I let people touch me like a statue in search of passion I’ll never refind. It’s healing. My father once bought out an entire stand of girl scout cookies. Took a whole paycheck, Took his out of service Honda Civic for a spin speeding Down I-95 and told me he loved me. Blared the music over it so I could barely make out the words– Rev, stomp, wrapped tendrils of my hair around worlds I’ll always be too young to live in. Pull. 32 | Riley Ferver �Cicero, Hortensius Cicero: Inveneram, in magno deliciae, res quod vident se res quod cogitantes [res congitationis] sunt, non in utique res cogitantes, sed quod cogitatus transvehunt in menti indendum. Quando mens multorum viderunt corporalis rem, plerus coepiunt tortus contorquere sicut a vinculum. Attingunt comprehendunt multis alterorum corporalium rerum et procreant aliorum corporalium rerum, similibus patriae cum reges agnoscunt sui legum docere, non leges altera, sicut mathematica sicut Archimedes sui quod pronuntiata res docere non alia aliis quod pronuntiatis rebus sicut Theodorus. Ita, quam oportet quad ambones patrant eadem actiones tamen ambonum diversorum proponuntur? Nostri Terram potuit facimus in imaginationibus appellundus esse? Igitur modus scientiarum quod sunt extra corporum nostrorum exponuntur ad omnibus, non solum ei, sed etiam alterorum quoque. Igitur est quod magna etiam animi contentio adhibenda est in explicando Aristotele, si legas actiones un dialogus nobilis nominator Protrepticus. Unum docere mentis per imitando nata de imaginationum ad enim omnibus artibus videre. Pergunt energi laboribus quod similis sensibus. Et unus sensus properum sunt, sine aliquae labores cogitate dare enim secondo. At ea sensus difficilia est cognoscere properum cum videns ad unus pars artibus. Num, Hortensius, amicus meus, quid vobis videtur? Hortensius: O Cicero, dedisti nos un insigne postulatum de sensuum. In sensus, habeo imaginem de Jovis et properi cognoscam qui reor. Imprimis animus meus, Item sed mens meus. Papae! At sensi cogitationes tuae quod dividit amnis. Philosophia, quod artis est, indiget creari optime enim aliis sentire. Sensus ignotum sunt nobis sed quod sciuntur dii in Olympo. Igitur sensus facilia sunt apisci sed non capere. Difficile est agnoscere quomodo facile quod pronuntiata ostenditur en actus energias. Ita, non video ut quod pronuntiata, sed meditatas enim corpora nostra. Henry Zheng | 33 �Cicero: I had found, in great pleasure, that seeing objects are itself thinking objects, not in the sense objects are thinking, but such that it carries the thoughts that lodges into the mind. When the mind has seen much of these objects, many begin to twist and turn together like a rope. It touches one another [intertwines] with many of its other objects and create different forms, such also occurs in kingdoms when rulers recognize to demonstrate their own laws, not other laws as mathematicians like Archimedes demonstrate their own axioms instead of demonstrating others like Theodorus. And so, why must they both perform the same action yet different proposals? Could our world compose in bringing the imagination to exist? Therefore, the amount of knowledge existing outside our bodies is exposed to everything, not only from its own, but from others too. It is, then, that the great strain of mind was also previously explicit to be in Aristotle, if you read the workings of a dialogue known famously as philosophy in Protrepticus. There, one can demonstrate the mind by replicating the imagination’s creations towards an art displayed for all to see. They continue to be-at-work with such effort that almost seems identical to their senses. And one’s senses are immediate, without any effort to give thought on a second look. Yet, the sense itself is difficult to detect immediately when looking at only one part of the art. Now, Hortensius, my dear colleague, how shall you take this? Hortensius: Oh Cicero, you have given us such an interesting point about senses. For the senses, I have taken a bust of Jove and already knew what I am thinking. My soul tends on one side, but my mind believes in the other. How lovely it brings me joy! Yet, I had found your thoughts tending to the opposite of our rivers. Philosophy, which is an art, must be produced perfectly in a form sensible for others. The senses are rather unknown that only our gods in Olympus knows. There be it so, that senses must be easily reachable but never graspable. It is hard to tell how easily the demonstration appears in most be-at-work movements [activities]. So, I see this not as a demonstration, but contemplation for our working bodies. 34 | Henry Zheng �Lunatic Every song that knows your heavy tongue You owe to the love-pith of grapes. It birthed Us, whirligigs of dust. Yet ziggurats Surround you like Heaven’s remnant embers. Let down your beehives! Loose your bitter mouths! You chose this breathful motion for grave-peace, Grief’s howl for cricket sonatas, mushroom Bandoliers. Biers of longing, biers of frost. So it is. Each old face bears curlicues of such a straight-and-narrow tight-rope strut. Even stones suck upon the bitterness of this heaving flicker, dastardly life A caterpillar could darn caterwaul. I do. Meanwhile, you mount the pyramids, Mad-dash for upward passage, then confuse The posture of statues for temperance. Lysithia Page | 35 �36 | Hain Cho �Bridget Mace | 37 �To stay No ending in pining I cut through the woods As if short cuts make wandering quicker I’ll read it in the indentation Left on the back of pages Annotation that somebody somewhere Loved almost more than what they read I will not forget Or at least I haven’t Cooling water isn’t anything on coals Except for steam It will rise It won’t really ever dissipate It moves into the air like candles breathing slow No chances for wishes or recollection When everything spins while unraveling Look at these threads I know I know I asked for fabric spun in bone But my mother told stories Where the dresses spun gold I’ll believe her a little While I pull at loose knots I also believed in blue sky She was right when she told me why it was Holding the color she hated the one I don’t mind So I think I’ll keep choosing Belief in stories this time Gold gold gold I’ll pretend that I’m dripping in gold Bare riding bareback Please someone remember You love me and look at the ground Gold gold gold I’ll pretend that you dressed me in gold Shivering as the town passes Beneath naked stares Nothing passes It matches my pace Not quite dogging my steps I pursue it all from ahead Something about leading where You ask to be lead Forgive me for turning The spinning wheel while he holds me Forgive me for tickling threads I knot in my hair To kiss me Is fine But it’s wonderful kissing the air 38 | Kai Gyorki �Interview Do you read books with long titles? Do you smoke while you write or write while you smoke? And from whom did you assume that sad archaic smile? The interview is over. Now, left to solitary reflection, the pleasure has left with the lights and eager eyes, pranced away to entertain a crowd of people you will never know. You’ve birthed a creature you can’t control which will wander the earth with your name and will sadly be all that remains. Now, giving up the ghost, there’s nothing left to do but slide between the sheets and sleep. Aaron Shelsby | 39 �40 | Audrey Fox �Somewhere I am a warm chimney for an ugly black bird Somewhere I am a warm chimney for an ugly black bird. It must be true; boys’ eyes slip away like fish. I reach in the river to eat. Shiny alien fish like bugs buried in murky waters In red and white, To find a snake each time. I watched this morning as the small birds sat on the branches. Winter is each time a womb waiting for spring. A bird moves frantic. Have you watched them turn their heads? I think of bugs. Watching an ant move after it’s been smashed into the rug. I think of the mouse in the cupboard, So timid and greedy. What hides behind softness and eats what it likes? So timidly? What is round and warm? The feeling of a mammal. Rory Goode | 41 ��Editors Allyson Brink Kelly Kane Review Staff Esther Beland Linda Bellamy Valerie Brady Acacia Burnham Riley Ferver Grace Calk (A’22) Ian Glueckert Emerson Graves Catherine Greer Louise Harden Alexandra Jacobs Candyce Jones Craig Koch Sarah Lieberman Max Mersmann-Jones Daniel Nathan Yukyeong “Judy” Seo Aaron Shelsby Henry Zheng Front Cover Fruits of Paradise by Hain Cho �Energeia is the student-run literary and visual arts magazine of St. John’s College, Annapolis. Energeia is published twice a year, in the Winter and Spring. St. John’s College 60 College Ave. Annapolis, Maryland 21401 Submit to energeia@sjc.edu �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 48 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Winter 2022 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 2022. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Arts--Periodicals Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia_2022Winter Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/eeb66042157533093d8197e8eb94b7a1.mp3 a2cd67d91bea8b47b16daff2f6b49502 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data m4a Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:57:41 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Play and Playfulness in Plato Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Richard McCombs on September 1, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Plato thinks the serious person has need of much playfulness, and his dialogues describe many things as play that we might deem to be serious matters, for example, education, religious rites, philosophical inquiry, and books. The Athenian Stranger in the Laws even says that “we should live playing.” Despite his judgment that play has great worth, Plato did not publish an inquiry into its essence. This lecture attempts to explain Plato’s thought on what play is, its value, and how it can serve or be part of seriousness." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCombs, Richard A., II, 1967- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-09-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Play. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_MccombsR_Play_and_Playfulness_in_Plato_2023-09-01 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a9ff2c4c5b2e04f5f6e821981191fbff.mp3 745559bc83ab4b481015b4d7b021fac4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data m4a Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:21 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Timely Untimely Education Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Dean Sarah Davis on August 25, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: “I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” Nietzsche opens “The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life” with this quote from Goethe. It appropriately frames Nietzsche’s own meditation, which does not just walk us through different ways to relate to the past, giving us a schema for making sense of history, but invigorates and leads to a quickening within us. But how? This lecture investigates Nietzsche’s claim that the “excess of history” in modern times compromises the health and vitality of human life. It then considers “The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life” itself as presenting an alternative way to relate to history. Finally, it asks how, if at all, this alternative informs a St. John’s education. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Davis, Sarah Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-08-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. The advantage and disadvantage of history for life. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_DavisS_A_Timely_Untimely_Education_2023-08-25 Deans Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/77abfdeb9758ed9a7d57128e897740b4.mp3 b393f396b3805c85894b602b54edfc86 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:10:49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Grecian Urn Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 6, 1984, by Howard J. Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984-04-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received giving St. John's College blanket permission to make audiovisual recordings of Howard J. Fisher's lectures, speeches, and addresses available online, and to make copes of typescripts of Howard J. Fisher's lectures speeches, and addresses available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Symmetry Art Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Fisher_Howard_1984-04-06_ac Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6051e173ba55e71286335555b5353a91.mp3 388289a2a19563cd6f26542ec1f952dd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:56:08 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Second Thoughts about Shakespeare's As You Like It Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Grant Franks on June 14, 2023, as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. The Graduate Institute provided this description of the event: "As You Like It is a much-loved fixture in the Shakespearean canon, generally staged as a joyous woodland rom-com. However, if one dares to look a little more closely, – as the sophomore seminar that I co-lead did recently – doubts begin to surface. The seeming frivolity of action is dogged by questions. Why does a light comedy include patches of morose darkness like those in Jaques’s much-acclaimed “Seven Ages of Man” speech? Is Touchstone really a “touchstone” in any genuine sense, or is his suggestive name just meaningless fluff? In the romantic Forest of Arden, populated by shepherds speaking blank verse, why do Rosalind and Orlando conduct their offbeat courtship entirely in prose? Most importantly, why is the major plot tension of Act I – namely, the murderous sibling rivalries of Orlando and Olivier and of the two dukes – virtually ignored during the middle of the play and then casually, almost carelessly, disappeared in Act V? This lecture will not explain everything, but it aims to outline some interesting ways to puzzle over As You Like It. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Franks, Grant H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-06-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FranksG_Second_Thoughts_about_Shakespeare's_As_You_Like_It_2023-06-14 Graduate Institute Summer lecture series https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bc599f39ffa2ebfa83a42f46708ab37e.mp3 3756e817e0d3581c0efe90c0d11468b7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:19:49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Is Schrödinger’s <em>What is Life?</em> Still Worth Reading Today? Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on December 2, 2022, by Daniel Nicholson as part of the Formal Lecture Series. <br /><br />Dr. Nicholson describes his lecture: "Erwin Schrödinger’s <em>What is Life?</em> (1944) is one of the most celebrated scientific works of the twentieth century. However, like most classics, it is far more often cited than read. Efforts to seriously engage with Schrödinger’s arguments are rare. In this lecture, I will explore how well his ideas have stood the test of time. I will suggest that <em>What is Life?</em> should still be read today, though not for the reasons that may initially seem most apparent." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nicholson, Daniel J. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-12-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. " Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Schrödinger, Erwin, 1887-1961 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Nicholson_Daniel_2022-12-02_ac Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7a8a457c14dd4499ecc512c7e2b6ce56.mp3 6a1141476694499a2c873eeafe9601d9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiocassette Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:07:05 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Race and Social Justice: On W.E.B. DuBois' <em>The Conservation of Races</em> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 20, 1991, by Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr. as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944- Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-09-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963 Race Social justice Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Tape 1173 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f7d0c7b4022a275a8bce9f0bd3f6a3f6.mp3 a21ccb1ada42f633ddf4eb0633cae11c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:02:39 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hegel's Reading of Antigone Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 30, 1988, by Patricia Locke as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Locke, Patricia M. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988-09-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received giving St. John's College blanket permission to make recordings of lectures and to make them available in the library and online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Hege, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831 Sophocles. Antigone Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Locke_Patricia_1988-09-30_ac Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3c3d0ae928a0a806429a1e666b32ead5.mp3 cdf40187adb39f3411c29c35ff75d911 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio cassette Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:37:03 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource What Is a Philosophic Question? Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 28, 1989, by Samuel S. Kutler as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kutler, Samuel S. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-04-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Metaphysics Philosophy Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Kutler_Samuel_1989-04-28_ac Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a4c7b1237cb1df765ba743dd80af9cc3.pdf 102aee99e19595e43bee4c295050edb6 PDF Text Text ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jacob Klein Collection Description An account of the resource The Jacob Klein Collection contains Klein's personal papers and faculty papers. It includes correspondence, publications, lectures, notes, and diaries. Please contact the library staff for more information about the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Klein, Jacob, 1899-1978 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Greenfield Library holds the rights to Jacob Klein's work. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English German Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KleinCollection Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 84 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Das logische und das geschichtliche Element in Hegels Philosophie Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Klein, Jacob Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1922 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource German Description An account of the resource Jacob Klein's Ph.D. dissertation from the University of Marburg in 1922. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Klein_PersonalPapers_01_04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Greenfield Library holds the rights to Jacob Klein's work.