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Is St. John's College the Antidote To What Ails Us Politically, Culturally, andEducationally?

Forbes - 8/17/2011 @ 6:48AM |11,574 views

I love St. Johns College (full disclosure: I received my Masters from the school in 2002). Asa lover, it fits my needs perfectly: a deep listener, a keen learner, respectful, patient,tolerant, seeking out the greatest works and biggest questions, and, yes, ironic. You neediron y to be my lover and to be the great books school.

The tenor and direction of most academic institutions, like the tenor and direction of ourmass culture, like the tenor and direction of most lovers, is away from big questionstowards smaller, niche, ephemera. Swimming against that tide seems peculiar, evenabsurd, not to mention impractical. But, like St. Johns, I embrace that strangeness (likean Irish monk studiously copying the great works of western civilization as the barbariansknocked at the gate, except I am lousy at Latin and Greek).

Fortunately, there are a few other anomalous souls left in America, who, like the rebel

readers in Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451, seek out difficult works for their ownbetterment and for the improvement of their families, communities, and country. I stronglybelieve that the two campuses of St. Johns College (Santa Fe and Annapolis) are thecivilized answer to the uncivil sophistry that Bradbury foresaw.

With that optimistic backdrop, and my yearly pilgrimage to St Johns Summer Classics firmly in mind, I sat down for a Johnny-to- Johnny dialogue with St. Johns College Santa Fepresident, Michael Peters . Mike was one of my two tutors during a recent weeklongseminar on Joseph Conrads dense, rewarding spy novel , The Secret Agent. As a formerU.S. Army Colonel, Chief of Staff at the United States Military Academy at West Point,attach at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and Executive Vice President and Chief OperatingOfficer of the Council on Foreign Relations, he seemed like the perfect person to discuss therelationship between St. Johns unique pedagogy and my broader concerns about educationand public policy.

JAMES CROTTY (JC) : Mike, theres an objective and comprehensive international test now,the Program for International Student Assessment (or PISA), that 15-year-olds around theworld take every three years. On the 2009 test, China came out number one and the U.S.was way down . We ranked 14 th in reading, 17 th in science, and 25 th in math. We spend somuch as a country on education, but we are falling further and further behind other nations.Is there something intrinsic to our current democracy that is failing us in the educationrealm? Why are we continually failing at these educational benchmarks?

MICHAEL PETERS (MP) : I guess there are a couple of things that strike me. First, I thinkthe Chinese have demonstrated they are effective test-takers. Their educational system isdirected towards that kind of evaluation. Its funny because I was just having aconversation with a woman who works for UNESCO in China. She was complaining that theChinese that she works with, you cant give them an open -ended task. You have to lay outabsolutely everything for them. Tell them exactly how they need to do the business andthen they can do it exactly that way. But when it comes to creativity, to flexibility, tocritical thinking, their skills are really lacking. As for the United States, I think its obviouslyvery, very complicated, but one of the things that has made it more of a challenge is thatincreasingly over the last generation we have put more and more obligations on schoolsthat are not necessarily directly connected to the classroom. Schools have become the

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social center of s tudents lives. They feed them in the morning for breakfast and they takecare of them during the day, and then they have after- school activities, and then, wevedone things in the abstract and in the particular that are probably the right thing to do dealing with students with disabilities and those kinds of things but that put a greatdemand on school systems. And I think that makes it harder for our schools to focuscompletely on the education part in the classroom.

JC : In Europe, at least in Germany when I visited, they do not understand this. They get akick out of, for example, how American sports culture is tied up with ones school. Becausethey do their sports in clubs. They do not do sports through the schools. Because schoolsare where you learn and then you leave. We have a very strong emotional attachment toour schools, built through sports, other extracurriculars, cultural attractions, fundraising,reunions, and so on.

MP : Oh, absolutely.

JC : And maybe that is a positive thing. Yet despite that strong emotional attachment, Ihave this continual experience that American students are not as smart as they were even

in my era. I am aware that this is a curmudgeonly tendency in me as I get older, but thePISA results verify that American students are not keeping up with our competitors. Of course, Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffet and others are generously investing a lot of money tryingto solve this problem on the primary and secondary school levels. And I was involved in thismovement myself in the South Bronx of New York City in terms of mentoring inner cityyoung men; I am completing postproduction on a documentary about that experience called

Crottys Kids. But it seems to me that the focus of Gates, Buffett and others is inresearching how to be a better teacher, teaching teachers how to teach, better principals,all that stuff. But the St. Johns pedagogy is not focused on these things that seem to be atthe center of the greater education debate. We are doing something different here. What isthat thing that is different?

MP : At St. Johns we have one undergraduate program which is distinctly interdisciplinary,and based on the fundamental liberal arts. We are the epitome of the liberal arts college.And because we only have that one program, that one major, were laser focused. Werenot trying to create a business major. Were not trying to create fine arts major. Were nottrying to create a sociology major. Were focused on this interdisciplinary approach, andwere also focused on reading the original text, and bringing those texts into the classroom,and asking students to read them deeply, to think about them, and then be willing to talkabout them and write about them, and under the guidance and mentoring of a tutor, butnot to be professed to by the tutor. And the reason we call them tutors and not professorsis that we dont want them to profess. We want the students to, in a sense, be their ownteachers. So, thats the nature of our pedagogy. And we start out, we do it unashamedly,on Western texts. Not because there isnt value in Eastern texts or Middle Eastern texts we have a graduate program that looks at Eastern and Middle Eastern texts but because,

in four years, you can only do so much. Whats undermined the quality of education ingeneral is weve gotten into the Chi nese menu view of course selection. You take one fromcolumn A, one from column B, one from column C, and they may or may not be connectedwith each other. Theres no synergy there. But at St. Johns College we start out with theGreeks. We start out with the Greeks in math by studying Euclid. We start out with theGreeks in laboratory science by looking at Aristotle. We start out with the Greeks inseminar. We study Greek language. And then we progress through, so that all of thoseclasses are connected to one another and build on one another and show the connectivity,the very nature of all these things. And rather than distinguishing and demonstrating how

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theyre different from one another, were trying to show how they really are related to oneanother.

JC : Exactly. Now, I drank the Kool-Aid. I graduated from the St. Johns College Santa FeGraduate Institute . I attend St. Johns College Santa Fes Summer Classics every July. Ihost and lead Great Books discussions in the St. Johns shared inquiry manner. I am about

as converted as you can get. And I believe St. Johns is the answer to the dogmatic Know-Nothingism sweeping this country. In your parting remarks today at the Summer ClassicsWeek One closing luncheon, you said the same thing, but with an interesting fillip. Youtalke d of St. Johns as the antidote to the opinion -based nature of our current nationaldiscourse, where people have answers when they dont even know the questions. Why isSt. Johns the antidote to our noisy polarized discourse?

MP : Its an antidote becaus e it provides an opportunity to ask questions and to questionanswers, and to think in terms of knowledge as opposed to accumulation of information. Ithink one of the things, again, that is unfortunate and were being driven to it more andmore by the nature of the internet and other kinds of things is that you can find almostanything you want thats a piece of information. All you have to do is Google it. But

accumulating a bunch of information doesnt translate into knowledge. It just means youknow how to Google. And theres some value in that, but its not enough, and you have toreally translate that. And so the example of St. Johns and the opportunity at St. Johns isone of the things that we need to raise the visibility of.

JC : I know you d love to have the problem of too many students and you need fiftycampuses. But there is a Zen koan built into the St. Johns pedagogical model. That is, youmust want to learn this way. It is a self-selecting marketing strategy. You could drive a lotof horses to the well of St. Johns College, but it wouldnt work for them unless they had thehunger for what you have to offer. To get people to come to St. Johns, you almost have tomiraculously develop the hunger for St. Johns in the culture at large . Is that a fairstatement or is it too strong?

MP : Its a bit strong. There are plenty of people out there who would, who are,searching for a St. Johns education. They just dont know its available. And so our big taskis to make folks aware of our existence and what it is we do. And Im persuaded thatdespite the overwhelming counterculture, if you will, or the lack of appreciation of what St.Johns is, there are more than enough people out there who would benefit from, and wouldcontribute to , a St. Johns education, that we can fill our seats.

JC : How do you go about doing that?

MP : Its actually one of the things that we struggle with most. At the retail level, if you will,we have a pretty aggressive admissions program. We do a lot of the things that othercolleges and universities do to get in front of prospective students. But in todays world andin todays economy, its an even bigger challenge because the overwhelming sense of theculture is that, Why do you go to college? You go to college to get a job.

JC : Correct. And then theres the 90/10 rule that just came out in June from theDepartment of Education. It has to do with loan repayment, but more broadly it is the ideathat a student, when he or she is done, must get a job in their field of study, whatever thatis. St. Johns, as you said, is a liberal arts college, so its not a trade school, where, with thedegree, you can go out and, say, cut hair. Its training in how to think, how to listen. So

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how does that model of education square with the gainful employment mantra that seemsto be gaining steam?

MP : I think that education is, at its root, learning. And at St. Johns we want to attract,we want to foster, and we want to move into the rest of society people who love to learn.And learning, first and foremost, for its own sake, but also because of how that learning canbe put into action in society. But the way you put your learning into action is not just inyour vocation, you put it into action in your family, you put it into action in your community,you put it into action in your church or your synagogue or your mosque, and so educationand higher education is not just about preparing you for the workforce. Although I wouldargue that the St. Johns education is an excellent preparation for the workforce. Not for aparticular thing, but to give you the kinds of skills that it takes to operate in a moderneconomy.

JC : Could you name three or four of those skills that a Johnny will have that the average kidgraduating from Northwestern or the University of Chicago or somewhere else might nothave?

MP : Well, I wouldnt say that people who are graduating from Northwestern or someother very fine college wouldnt necessarily have, but the skills that I think our studentsdemonstrate are, first of all, the ability to read intensely and deeply, to think critically, towrite coherently and cogently, and to be intellectually courageous. Because one of thethings that we demand because of the nature of our program is that youve got to takethe whole program. You cant just focus on the things that you think youre good at or thatyoure comfortable with. If you dont like math, you still must take math at St. JohnsCollege. If you dont like language, you still must take language at St. Johns College. Andwhat that builds and what that requires is an intellectual courage to be willing to putyourself out there into areas where youre fundamentally uncomfortable and be willing totake that on. That courage then translates into your ability to do just about anything youwant because you feel confident enough to say, I can get into this. I can learn this,whatever it is I have to learn, whatever skill I have to learn, and I can then practice it. Andso when somebody says, What do you do with a St. Johns education? It sounds kind of trite, but I say, Anything you want! Because youve built those kind of skills that gives youthe capacity to take on almost any intellectual challenge.

JC : Thats why I keep coming back here every summer because I start to fall into themental trap t hat Im not trained as a specialist. This occurs a lot, in weaker moments:

Well, Im not a good enough writer because I was never trained in writing. I never got adegree in writing. Ive only taken one writing course. This is the courage -sapping doubtthat the culture in a way feeds us. You need to be a specialist, you need to get a Ph.D. orsome higher credential. And when I come back to St. Johns every summer, when I getback into the flow of things, it builds back that intellectual confidence.

MP : I completely agree with that. Nevertheless, we had this issue: not all Johnnies areable to get into the work force. There seems to be a disconnect with employers.

JC : Yes. The graduates Ive talked to say employers dont fully get the person thats sittingthere, whos gone through the St. Johns process. This is a critical thinker. This is a personwhos actually more useful than you realize, even though he or she doesnt have a Ph.D. inmath. That does seem to be an issue.

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MP : It certainly is. And I think that one of the things that we have been paying a lot of attention to over the time that Ive been here is to help our students make that transitionfrom the college to the rest of their lives, and, in particular, into their work li ves. And tohelp them develop the skills to translate what theyve done here into something that anemployer would recognize. It is a matter of translation.

JC : What are the things you would teach a new graduate on how to go about making thattransition?

MP : The biggest thing is to help them recognize how they can explain what theyve doneto someone who hasnt had a St. Johns education, to help an employer understand theamount of writing theyve done, the amount of reading theyve done, the breadth of whattheyve studied. And the fact that and this is a common misunderstanding of what a St.Johns education is it isnt all just sittin around in a classroom talking. Youre doinghands-on stuff. Youre doing experiments. Youre going to the bo ard and demonstrating, soyoure learning briefing skills by going to the board and demonstrating a proposition inEuclid. And youre learning to operate in different languages. Youre learning to operate inFrench and Greek. Youre also learning to operate in a mathematical language. And youre

learning to operate in a musical language. And I think that we have to help our graduatesbe able to do that translation of what we do here. The other part is fundamental practicalskills. How do you write a resume? How do you conduct yourself in an interview? How doyou perform in an interview? A lot more of that nuts and bolts stuff because its true for anyyoung person going into the workforce for the first time, but especially because of theintensity of our program, because of the commitment that our students make to it, theykeep their eye on that ball, theyre not spending as much time thinking, Okay, well whatam I going to do with this? How am I going to translate this? And I think we have anobligation to help them do that.

JC : We talked a lot about time in our discussion of Conrads The Secret Agent . So, lets loopback. Now youre a tutor at St. Johns and you are the president of the Santa Fe campus. You are very aware of the pedagogy, the methodology. If you put yourself back into theorganizations youve worked for, at West Point, in the special operations division of theArmy, at the Council on Foreign Relations, how would that have made you a different bossor employee?

MP : Thats a r eally interesting question. I think that, at its root, I would have been moreconcerned with the question than the answer. In hierarchical organizations like the military,youre always looking for the solution, but often times youre looking for the solu tion to thewrong question. One of the things that I really learned from St. Johns is that the mostimportant thing is the question. And getting the question right is the most importantexercise.

JC : Can an argument be made that the military does not want to ask certain fundamental

questions because it would threaten its current level of funding?

MP : Its hard to generalize about a big institution like the military. I suspect that thereason for not asking fundamental questions is the pace of the acti vity that youre engagedin. Its not that military officers arent capable of reflection, but theyre engaged in anactivity that is so overwhelming, so time- sensitive, so urgent that you dont have a lot of time for reflection. And one of the things that the army does, probably as well, and maybebetter than any of the services, is it really tries, especially with its career officers, to provide

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footprint. And I was shocked when the footprint became so large. Looking back at thepolicy, would a policy based predominantly on Special Forces, more of a quiet war, havebetter solved the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan?

MP : The invasion of Iraq was a huge strategic blunder in my personal view. The jury isobviously still out, but the positive from our experience in Iraq at this point seems to pale incomparison with the negative. So, yeah, if we were going to do something in Iraq, we wouldhave been far better off to do it quietly, covertly, not with a massive infusion of militaryforce. And I think that Afghanistan is probably the same. And I think that because in thecase of Afghanistan we have a fundamental mismatch between what our objectives seem tobe and what our resources are to be able to achieve those objectives. I think the idea of building a modern national state in Afghanistan is folly, and if thats what were going to tryto do, you cant set an end date on doing it. And it would take a lot more forces and a lotmore money to be able to accomplish that. So, yeah, I think that our strategy there oughtto be more focused on the counterterrorism aspect and less on the nation-building.

JC : But the problem is there is this view on both sides of the aisle that if you have a hugemilitary, you have to use it. There is something self-perpetuating about large organizations

like the military. Is that tendency operative within the armed forces?

MP : If thats the case, I dont think it comes from the military. I t hink it comes from thepolitical side. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Allbright, when she was talking aboutBosnia and Kosovo, said, What have we got this big military for, if we dont use it? And Ithink that kind of capacity is the reason that George W. Bush could invade Iraq because hethought he had the capability to do it. The other thing is that (and this is part of thechallenge in Afghanistan), by virtue of its organization, by virtue of the nature of what themilitary does, and by nature of the people who are in it, they have this can-do attitude

Yes sir, yes sir, if you ask me to do it, Ill get it done one way or the other you end upasking the military to do things that arent appropriate for the military to do.

JC : So, it is a political problem in the sense that its rooted very deeply in the fact that a lotof defense money flows into the districts of elected officials. Lets be honest

MP : Well, in the procurement of weapons for sure.

JC : Yeah, and thats a big deal because it brings jobs and other benefits. So, how are weever going to get out of that cycle?

MP : Well, I suspect the budget crisis that were facing now is going to put increasingpressure on the defense budget, and frankly, appropriately so from my point of view. And Ithink that its going to be increasingly difficult to protect the defense budget if youre goingto cut Medicare and Social Security.

JC : When you look at America right now as a Johnnie, youve read Montesquieu on thefall of the Roman empire are we at a point where we are falling right into the imperialoverreach trap that the great scholars of Rome talked about?

PM : Theres certainly elements of that and I think again that we have, for a whole variety of reasons, pretty much reached the limits of our resources to be able to do these things.Were going to have to retrench. We dont have any other choice. But I dont think werebeyond recovery. Were a large society and population. We are still very, very creative.

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Were not where we were in comparison to other countries, but I think part of what we haveto recognize is that its not so much that were falling behind, its that others are catchingup with us. In the post-World-War-II period, we were the richest, we were the largest, andwe dominated.

JC : We killed off our economic competitors.

PM : Right. And everybody was so far behind us that we could kind of coast along, but wecant continue to coast along, because others, the Chinese, the Europeans, theyre catchingup. The world is global and talent flows to where the rewards are the greatest and wherethe opportunities are the greatest. And I think still for the most part thats the UnitedStates. But there are other pockets in the world where talent is interested in flowing, too.Some places in India. Obviously some in China and Europe and others, and so itsbecoming a more equal world from that point of view.

JC : Would you say that were moving into a world where what will separate us from ourcompetitors is not so much our military might but what Joseph Nye called our soft power. Things like education. Will education be the arbiter?

PM : Yeah, I think education is one of them, but I think, at its root, its really about theeconomy. And thats why the big question is how do you build the economy of the future? By having educated people. Again, this is why I think a St. Johns education is soappropriate because jobs are going to be increasingly mobile. Increasingly, folks change

jobs five, six times in the course of their working lives. How do you make those kinds of transitions? What are the skills that give you the ability to do that? Well, theyre the kindof skills that you learn at St. Johns College.