Page:Catalogue of St. John's College 1945.pdf/9

28 in both literature and science. Dialectic starts on the levels of language and mathematics and with their aids reaches the fundamentals and ultimates, and in the process the book under discussion may be torn to pieces.

One immediate result is the improvement in actual reading. To accompany the reading of books, the seminars meet twice a week for two hours. Recovery from confusion and misunderstanding may result from the first meeting; on the other hand it may be only at the last meeting or later meetings that the text delivers up its meaning. The seminars are the substantial core of the whole program and the intellectual process prepared for by reading and writing is brought to realization most often under seminar conditions.

The Formal Lecture
Formal lectures are delivered to the entire student body at least once a week. Lecturing by instructors is discouraged elsewhere in the curriculum and concentrated in the formal lecture. These lectures are given in the Great Hall in the evening with audience and platform set as for an outside lecturer. All the formal arts of the platform are used for the purpose of a sustained and artistic exposition of a subject matter that may have been studied in fragments in other ways. About half of the lectures are given by guest lecturers, notably Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago, Mark Van Doren of Columbia, and Edward Kasner of Columbia. Members of the resident College faculty give the rest, no single member giving more than three during the year.

Lecturing except on the popular platform is almost a lost art in this country. It is a very high art demanding artistic skill and sensitivity which are dulled and killed by the forced practice of the ordinary university classroom. Long preparation is needed to free it from sophistry and empty personal rhetoric. Our lectures are not always successful, but when they are successful they might be given and understood on any occasion. Students learn to listen to good talk, to talk that is often over their heads, but talk that is remembered and absorbed long after the immediate hearing. Each lecture is followed by a period of informal query and discussion, in which the students learn to talk back.