43 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Ocius
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5579 days ago
48 posts - 77 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Ancient Greek
Studies: French, Latin, Sanskrit
| Message 41 of 43 17 August 2009 at 2:19am | IP Logged |
I apologize if my last post seemed to be, as you put it, more of a "school promotion". I'll edit it a bit to delete the less relevant points and talk more about the language curriculum's pros and cons.
Edited by Ocius on 17 August 2009 at 2:35am
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| Kugel
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6527 days ago
497 posts - 555 votes
Speaks: English*
| Message 42 of 43 17 August 2009 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
Ocius wrote:
I just stumbled across this thread, and -- as a student (sophomore) at St. John's College in Santa Fe (the school based on the "Great Books" education mentioned in his original post) I'd like to say a few things regarding my experience with their curriculum. Perhaps an account of their system from someone currently enrolled in it will be of use to you in developing your own curriculum.
The language curriculum is structured as follows: Freshman and Sophomore year are dedicated primarily to Ancient Greek.
Junior and Senior years are dedicated to French. I have no experience with this curriculum as yet, so I'll refrain from commenting.
Now, in my opinion, the language curriculum offers a very good opportunity to become well-acquainted with Ancient Greek (and I assume French), however one does need enough motivation to continue with the study outside of the minimum requirements for the course (I imagine this is true for any university language course). The St. John's library, however, gives you all the materials you could possibly need for this: they have many copies of the original language texts for all of the great books as well as many different translations from different eras. I assume that your proposed course would aim to have such a library.
Strictly from an aspiring polyglot's perspective, only having access to two languages academically is disappointing. They also don't really teach methodology for learning languages unless you explicitly seek out one of the polyglot professors, which is, again, very disappointing. However, to be fair, the school's goal is a great books education, not a detailed study of languages (the reading list for their great books curriculum is available freely at their website, if you'd like to take a look and compare to yours).
Despite that, the community of learners that such a school attracts brings about a ton of opportunities for extra-curricular study. Last year there were Sanskrit (the graduate institute here is in Eastern Classics) and German study groups going on that I was aware of, and probably others that I was not informed of. There is also a weekly French discussion group (i.e. a 1.5 hour long session in which you can only speak French) to supplement the class-room learning of French. This coming year, I'll be taking part in an Arabic study group and am looking into a German discussion group and possibly a Russian group.
If a polyglot institute were to be opened up, I'd hope that such a community of learning would be the goal -- perhaps even more explicitly than at St. John's, since they cater more to a younger crowd (I myself am only 19). Having the constant companionship of other scholars who are passionate about their work and study creates a highly motivating atmosphere.
More on the topic of the great books education: St John's bases its great books curriculum around two, two-hour classes per week (called the "Seminar"). We're given a reading to do, then we show up and the teacher presents an opening question to begin a discussion about the text. This format can be both very rewarding for some nights or very frustrating for others. As much as I love group discussions, the major lack that I am beginning to feel at St John's is the lack of a real lecture course: sometimes, just having an experienced scholar explain his opinions and experience with an author, an idea, etc., is much more rewarding and insightful than struggling through a text with a handful of students who didn't read closely enough, didn't think hard enough, etc... That said, I believe any Great Books curriculum should have a strong core of classes that make use of both group discussions (that heavily involve the students) AND lectures from a knowledgeable professor on, perhaps, topics such as general learning methodology, etc...
-Chris |
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Sounds like a good time to me. But clearly the college is slanted towards books that aren't rocking the boat so to speak. There is hardly anything from contemporary atheists or agnostics from looking at the books offered in 2004 on the wikipedia website. I also find it odd that the Great Books program covered Euclid up to Lobachevsky, but ignored the more important history of statistics and probability, which had more of an effect on the world than geometry, at least politically and socially.
Edited by Kugel on 17 August 2009 at 5:37am
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| Ocius
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5579 days ago
48 posts - 77 votes
Speaks: English*, German, Ancient Greek
Studies: French, Latin, Sanskrit
| Message 43 of 43 17 August 2009 at 1:38pm | IP Logged |
Ya, there certainly is room for improvement in their reading list: I've spoken with a few of the older teachers there, and many of them agree. The problem is, from what I've heard, primarily lack of time. Their academic committee has to balance the workload around the average student, which can be a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. Personally, I'm more disappointed in the lack of contemporary linguistics/logic coverage in philosophy -- i.e. Wittgenstein, Frege, etc., than anything else. But I definitely agree that their curriculum could use some general improvements across the board for the more serious liberal arts/language/philology scholars. Unfortunately, there really aren't many other options for someone interested in a Great Books, liberal arts education.
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Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery
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