Page:Catalogue of St. John's College 1945.pdf/8

26 thought. The second term is concerned with various kinds of translation from important texts in which important things are being said and the grammar of the language is being used for purposes of full expression. These translations range from technical grammatical translation, though various stylistic variations to abstract and concise formulation of logical content. The last term in each year is devoted to the writing of grammatical, rhetorical, and logical commentaries on the texts with a final emphasis on original writing on the topics suggested by the text.

Language is man's most intimate external possession. The trained language sense extends man's imaginative powers. We therefore move on it with an organized strategy. The effects are in sustained powers of imagination and therefore in increased attention and powers of analytic thought.

These tutorials meet in small classes, not over ten in a class, so that individual observation and instruction are the rule. Not a small part of the advantage of such instruction comes from the opportunity for tutors to diagnose individual difficulties.

The Mathematics Tutorial
Next to the mother tongue the language of numbers and figures is the most important symbolic possession of men. In fact it is a language within the mother tongue providing a most powerful practical and theoretical extension. In view of our present scientific and industrial conditions of life, the decay and elimination of mathematics in education is most disturbing. This default has become so common now that many persons believe that they natively lack mathematical ability. Nothing could be more crippling to the individual nor more discouraging for the future of democratic societies, if it were true. The apparent disability is due to a decay in the techniques for teaching mathematics and this in turn is due to misunderstandings of the fundamental nature and intention of mathematics. Wide variation in individual training and performance is evidence of this state of affairs.

Therefore we begin with almost a complete year spent in a thorough study of Euclid's Elements in its entirety. This is the book that made European mathematics possible, and it can still be used to remedy our deficiencies. Given this year of study the other books in mathematics and natural science, now so formidable to both teacher and student, can be approached and conquered.

For this purpose the tutorial classes in mathematics meet five times a week throughout the four years. The teaching is conventional and familiar for the most part, exposition, recitation, drill in calculation and proof. On the other hand intelligibility must be added to operational skills, and this is brought to light by discussion of the incidence of mathematics, not only on the sciences, but also on logic and metaphysics, and through this on the entire subject matter of the program. Mathematics belongs to the liberal arts and its development through symbolic procedures throws a great deal of light not only on speculation but upon the literary and scientific imagination. As in the case of the language tutorials, the small class of not over ten students allows individual diagnosis and instruction, and the student who has difficulties on the operational level may have special remedial laboratory exercises prescribed for him. Thus hand-minded boys may discover the liberal dimensions of their skills.

The Seminar
A book is one-half of a conversation, and good conversation, whether practical or theoretical in intention, is one of the highest performances in the liberal arts. Seminars of from ten to twenty students with at least two instructors or leaders, answer back, the other half of the conversations that great books demand. Plato's Dialogues, most of which are read in the first year, set the models for seminar discussion, and first lessons in discussion are learned in reading Plato. Books of various kinds are discussed in various ways. Some books such as Aristotle's Organon are read in the seminar with the French method of explication de texte to insure understanding. It is assumed that other books have presented a subject, and discussion starts where they leave off, following the argument where it leads. Literary works demand literary criticism; scientific books demand a philosophy of nature.

Versatility in question and answer allows the exploitation of the work done in other parts of the program. Training in language facilitates formulation of opinion; mathematical imagination and insight open up new depths and subtleties