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St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

sjc.edu

11–20 of 155 posts

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#11

I have read many of these works listed. I don't like this database-looking list format; too many books there. Some of them are quite challenging. Freshman Reading: Homer - Illyad, Odyssey ... ok! if you read the Odyssey in your own native language (not greek), you probably will enjoy it, but how are you going to know about the grand themes unless someone tells you about it? seems sad in a way that these great works a…

Is it better to have read them and missed the themes or not to have read them at all?

Background: read both Iliad and odyssey in children's section of library in the 5th grade. Also read most of one of them in an honors philosophy class in college. Can't remember which. Recalled the scene where they were throwing Trojans off the walls after defeating the city when I made a hard tackle in rugby, driving my enemy into the ground.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#12

Highly recommend this school.

Tried to get my oldest to go here. She reads super fast with high comprehension and loves to debate, but she's so terrified of going into debt that she's now in a state college taking computer science and saying Chat GPT is way more helpful than her professor for understanding or fixing code.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#14

I have read many of these works listed. I don't like this database-looking list format; too many books there. Some of them are quite challenging. Freshman Reading: Homer - Illyad, Odyssey ... ok! if you read the Odyssey in your own native language (not greek), you probably will enjoy it, but how are you going to know about the grand themes unless someone tells you about it? seems sad in a way that these great works a…

> how are you going to know about the grand themes unless someone tells you about it? SJC grad here. The Program encourages you to encounter the works for yourself and see what _you_ think the themes/ideas are. You’re lightly discouraged from reading the translator’s preface, since they share their own opinions. Different students bring different translations of the material, and additionally the language class that…

very interesting - thanks for posting that additional angle

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#16

Huh, this is neat. If you click on a book's subject(s), it will then take you to the specific topic and a reading list tailored to it. For example, this is their Mathematics reading list: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/subjects... .

Except that list is ... eclectic, to put it politely. If you want to learn maths, I wouldn't recommend Aristotle, Descartes and Darwin.

Perhaps I don't understand what "The information presented is for illustration purposes only and may not reflect the current reading list" means, and why one would link that page anyway.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#17
A former partner of mine was a St. John's alum (and champion), so I heard a lot about and thought a lot about their undergraduate program.

Of course this is a wonderful list of brilliant works. I don't know if reading nothing but primary sources is the most efficient way to become a critical thinker or knowledgeable (e.g. reading Euclid might be a treat for those who know geometry, but is it the ideal way to learn geometry?), but it certainly sounds like a great way to become cultured and a great way to spend four years, given the chance.

My feeling was also that such a heavy emphasis on classical (Western!) thought and works does its students a bit of a disservice. This is a little dramatic, but I'd say a very serious view in the postmodern, post-WWII academy is that the culmination of 3000 years of Western culture, in the country that was considered by many to be at the height of Western civilization, turned out to be the Holocaust, and that so deeply fetishizing "the canon" is problematic for that reason and others. Without dismissing the greatness of anything on this list, it's unfortunate that it's not until the third or fourth years that you start to see stuff from outside the European tradition, in very limited numbers, often just as electives. There seems to be a decent selection of works reckoning with American slavery, which is good, but if I recall and AFAICT not much about European colonialism, the Holocaust, CIA-backed coups in South America, the horrors of Stalinism, rising Asian powers, the postmodern condition, any post-sexual revolution gender politics...a robust knowledge of the Greeks is all well and good, but I don't know if that's enough to be a well-rounded citizen of the world, these days.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#18
post #16

Huh, this is neat. If you click on a book's subject(s), it will then take you to the specific topic and a reading list tailored to it. For example, this is their Mathematics reading list: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/subjects... .

Except that list is ... eclectic, to put it politely. If you want to learn maths, I wouldn't recommend Aristotle, Descartes and Darwin. Perhaps I don't understand what "The information presented is for illustration purposes only and may not reflect the current reading list" means, and why one would link that page anyway.

The Great Books approach involves reading the actual historical development of a subject and seeing not only what the state of the art is but how we got from here to there.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#19

Highly recommend this school.

Tried to get my oldest to go here. She reads super fast with high comprehension and loves to debate, but she's so terrified of going into debt that she's now in a state college taking computer science and saying Chat GPT is way more helpful than her professor for understanding or fixing code.

Smart kid. I would even skip the whole state college thing as soon as she can be dangerous enough to get a job.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#20
post #17

A former partner of mine was a St. John's alum (and champion), so I heard a lot about and thought a lot about their undergraduate program. Of course this is a wonderful list of brilliant works. I don't know if reading nothing but primary sources is the most efficient way to become a critical thinker or knowledgeable (e.g. reading Euclid might be a treat for those who know geometry, but is it the ideal way to learn ge…

> a very serious view in the postmodern, post-WWII academy is

That's just a load of edgy nonsense to get attention. Unfortunately, it seems to have worked.

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