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DBCA

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St. John's is all about encouraging independent thought. No tutor gets upset just because someone disagrees.

I'm all for encouraging independent thought, naturally...but what I observed at St. John's was a persistent belief that everyone's thoughts are equally valid. Perhaps because I only know the school through my sister, I have a skewed notion of what it's all about, but it struck me as very "One can't really know anything" territory.

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I'm all for encouraging independent thought, naturally...but what I observed at St. John's was a persistent belief that everyone's thoughts are equally valid.  Perhaps because I only know the school through my sister, I have a skewed notion of what it's all about, but it struck me as very "One can't really know anything" territory.

A few people here believe that everyone's thoughts are equally valid, but that is not, in my experience, a majority view.

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If I may ask, assuming you had an understanding of Objectivism when you were selecting a school...what made you choose St. John's?

The reason I'm asking is, my sister graduated from there.  Not that she had much of a grasp on reality before she went, but in her four years there I watched her struggle so much because of the lack of clear direction, the "we don't claim to know any more than you" mentality.  I sat in on a lecture..whoops, excuse me, a seminar - on John Locke, and was horrified that they spent three hours discussing his words in a complete vaccuum.  Each time someone would attempt to include some fact that would lend context to his writing, they would get a slap on the wrist and a reminder that they were only allowed to discuss the words in this specific essay (sorry, can't recall which one). After the class I mentioned my concern about the lack of context and my sister's response was a nonchalant, "Yeah, we tend to avoid context here."

Anyway, I definitely see the appeal to studying the "Great Books" in depth, but the discussion method used at St. John's definitely troubles me.

I chose St. John's because it is the best program in philosophy that I know of and the only program that takes the use of original sources seriously. Even if seminar discussions sometimes have their drawbacks, reading original sources and discussing them with other intelligent and mostly rational people who are going through the same program is much more valuable to me than hearing mediocre lectures. Besides, the seminar only makes up part of the program. And we DO have one weekly lecture here.

Your critcism regarding context is inaccurate. Students are encouraged to put works in context and make integrations--as long as they have read the works with which they are making integrations as part of the program. Sometimes tutors jump in with additional outside knowledge--that really depends on the tutor. We do think, at St. John's, that it is possible to consider a work on its own merits, even if one could come back later on and get more out of it, once one has more context.

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