This Weeks College: St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD & Santa Fe, NM
St. John’s is the kind of place that you have to want to go to. It’s so extreme that there are two of them, one in the east and one in the west, kind of like Wicked Witches. And like the Wicked Witches, there is a kind of evil joy to St. John’s. It’s the college where there is “the freedom of no choice.” Yes, that’s right. Everyone there does the exact same curriculum: Great Books.
At St. John’s they ignore every educational trend, fad, or caprice. In fact, at St. John’s (which despite its name has no religious affiliation) has a storied history as the Maryland Colony’s first “free” school going back to its origins in 1696 when it was King William’s School. From this humble beginning, St. John’s produced four signers of the Declaration of Independence, Francis Scott Key (yes, that Francis Scott Key), the founders of Elektra records (maybe you’ve heard of their acts? Queen? The Doors?), founder of the Cato Institute, Carmax, and the creator of MacGyver (let’s face it, people there are smart, ok). In case you’ve always wondered how MacGyver knew how to do all those things, it’s because he knew everything there was to know about the origins of western thought.
That’s what you will study at St. John’s: western thought. Actually, since there are two of them you can, oddly, study eastern thought, but only in the west. In the east, you can only study western thought. St. John’s takes the idea of the liberal arts curriculum, well, literally. There are no majors here. As in the days of yore, you will study Classical Greek so that you may better understand thinkers like Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle. You’ll read Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Thucydides. Your science will include Archimedes, and math will have Euclid as part of the curriculum.
In addition to your three semesters of Attic Greek, you will also study French for three semesters. Your French texts will include Pascal, Descartes, Rousseau, Racine, and Molière. English classes comprise yet more of your language content where focus will be on both poetry and prose and you will read authors like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor to name a few.
Even your sciences and maths will be full of great books. You will read Gallileo, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, and Einstein all while learning chemistry, physics and biology. In your math sequences you will read Newton, Godel, and Leibniz. And then will come music and arts because in a liberal arts curriculum, art is something that must be included. So you will sing, you will listen. And the music will be great: Bach, Beethoven, Shoenberg, Stravinsky, Mozart, and Bartók.
One of the main features of St. John’s is the seminar. It’s central to the student experience and is the class in which the great books are examined and discussed. A seminar has between 17 and 19 students, two tutors, and is question based. During the seminar, students will read a substantial amount and produce a significant paper which examines the themes and questions of the seminar. The paper produced is the basis for the oral exam students will take as well.
Juniors and seniors can delve deeper into individual thinkers in Preceptorials. These classes are chances for students to propose their own work on a text and spend 7-8 weeks studying a single text in lieu of a seminar. These preceptorials are really chances for students to independently learn with each other (numbers for these range, but few are over 10 per class), in a topic of shared interest.
As a senior, Johnnies take on the challenge of completing a Senior Essay. This really is a culmination of their four years of work and study at St. John’s. Unlike a lot of schools, the Senior Essay is not a research project or a summary of things learned. It’s an extended pursuit of a difficult and important questions in dialogue with an author of a text worth examining. In the first semester of senior year, students choose a question, a text, and an advisor with whom they will work. Through that semester, the student will work with the advisor on their essay, meeting periodically in order to make sure the student is making progress. For the first four weeks of the second semester, classes for seniors are suspended while students intensively work to complete their essays. They are then presented to a panel of three tutors who will review them and then give the student an oral exam. Submission of a completed senior essay and a satisfactory oral exam are conditions for graduation.
Since there are two St. John’s you can take your pick of campuses. St. John’s in Annapolis is the original and its dorms are mostly historic buildings. Gillium and Spector were built in the 2000s but the rest were all built before 1954 and several were built in the 19th century. Expect the housing the be, well, in keeping with the curriculum. The food is vegetarian and vegan friendly and much is locally sourced.
As for activities, they vary. While it is true that St. John’s once beat the University of Maryland 62-0 in football, it is also true that there is not currently a football team there. But croquet is huge at St. John’s Annapolis, as is sailing, crew, and fencing. Plus there are plenty of intramural sports as well. You can enjoy art, music, and theater of course, plus plenty of dance (swing and waltz are popular). The school newspaper The Gadfly is fairly well known, and many students are involved in community service or student government.
The Santa Fe campus does not have intercollegiate athletics, but has a great outdoor program, intramurals, and a bicycle loan program. Student activities range from the literary magazine there to the pottery group, theater to astronomy. Dorms are newer than those in Annapolis. Suites and apartments are also available as is theme housing. Archery is popular here!
Is St. John’s for you? Quartz calls it “The most forward-thinking, future-proof college in America.” which has to tell you something. It’s intensive reading. Think Ms. Bendick piled on AP World, with APUSH, and AP Psych. It’s reading heavy. But the conversations are amazing. If you’re someone who loves to talk about why we exist or what the purpose of life is, or simply Gryffindor v. Ravenclaw, this is your place. You will leave here able to think, reason, and critically evaluate. Ultimately, that’s what every educated person needs to be able to do.
Pros:
Cons:
St. John’s is the kind of place that you have to want to go to. It’s so extreme that there are two of them, one in the east and one in the west, kind of like Wicked Witches. And like the Wicked Witches, there is a kind of evil joy to St. John’s. It’s the college where there is “the freedom of no choice.” Yes, that’s right. Everyone there does the exact same curriculum: Great Books.
At St. John’s they ignore every educational trend, fad, or caprice. In fact, at St. John’s (which despite its name has no religious affiliation) has a storied history as the Maryland Colony’s first “free” school going back to its origins in 1696 when it was King William’s School. From this humble beginning, St. John’s produced four signers of the Declaration of Independence, Francis Scott Key (yes, that Francis Scott Key), the founders of Elektra records (maybe you’ve heard of their acts? Queen? The Doors?), founder of the Cato Institute, Carmax, and the creator of MacGyver (let’s face it, people there are smart, ok). In case you’ve always wondered how MacGyver knew how to do all those things, it’s because he knew everything there was to know about the origins of western thought.
That’s what you will study at St. John’s: western thought. Actually, since there are two of them you can, oddly, study eastern thought, but only in the west. In the east, you can only study western thought. St. John’s takes the idea of the liberal arts curriculum, well, literally. There are no majors here. As in the days of yore, you will study Classical Greek so that you may better understand thinkers like Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle. You’ll read Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Thucydides. Your science will include Archimedes, and math will have Euclid as part of the curriculum.
In addition to your three semesters of Attic Greek, you will also study French for three semesters. Your French texts will include Pascal, Descartes, Rousseau, Racine, and Molière. English classes comprise yet more of your language content where focus will be on both poetry and prose and you will read authors like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor to name a few.
Even your sciences and maths will be full of great books. You will read Gallileo, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, and Einstein all while learning chemistry, physics and biology. In your math sequences you will read Newton, Godel, and Leibniz. And then will come music and arts because in a liberal arts curriculum, art is something that must be included. So you will sing, you will listen. And the music will be great: Bach, Beethoven, Shoenberg, Stravinsky, Mozart, and Bartók.
One of the main features of St. John’s is the seminar. It’s central to the student experience and is the class in which the great books are examined and discussed. A seminar has between 17 and 19 students, two tutors, and is question based. During the seminar, students will read a substantial amount and produce a significant paper which examines the themes and questions of the seminar. The paper produced is the basis for the oral exam students will take as well.
Juniors and seniors can delve deeper into individual thinkers in Preceptorials. These classes are chances for students to propose their own work on a text and spend 7-8 weeks studying a single text in lieu of a seminar. These preceptorials are really chances for students to independently learn with each other (numbers for these range, but few are over 10 per class), in a topic of shared interest.
As a senior, Johnnies take on the challenge of completing a Senior Essay. This really is a culmination of their four years of work and study at St. John’s. Unlike a lot of schools, the Senior Essay is not a research project or a summary of things learned. It’s an extended pursuit of a difficult and important questions in dialogue with an author of a text worth examining. In the first semester of senior year, students choose a question, a text, and an advisor with whom they will work. Through that semester, the student will work with the advisor on their essay, meeting periodically in order to make sure the student is making progress. For the first four weeks of the second semester, classes for seniors are suspended while students intensively work to complete their essays. They are then presented to a panel of three tutors who will review them and then give the student an oral exam. Submission of a completed senior essay and a satisfactory oral exam are conditions for graduation.
Since there are two St. John’s you can take your pick of campuses. St. John’s in Annapolis is the original and its dorms are mostly historic buildings. Gillium and Spector were built in the 2000s but the rest were all built before 1954 and several were built in the 19th century. Expect the housing the be, well, in keeping with the curriculum. The food is vegetarian and vegan friendly and much is locally sourced.
As for activities, they vary. While it is true that St. John’s once beat the University of Maryland 62-0 in football, it is also true that there is not currently a football team there. But croquet is huge at St. John’s Annapolis, as is sailing, crew, and fencing. Plus there are plenty of intramural sports as well. You can enjoy art, music, and theater of course, plus plenty of dance (swing and waltz are popular). The school newspaper The Gadfly is fairly well known, and many students are involved in community service or student government.
The Santa Fe campus does not have intercollegiate athletics, but has a great outdoor program, intramurals, and a bicycle loan program. Student activities range from the literary magazine there to the pottery group, theater to astronomy. Dorms are newer than those in Annapolis. Suites and apartments are also available as is theme housing. Archery is popular here!
Is St. John’s for you? Quartz calls it “The most forward-thinking, future-proof college in America.” which has to tell you something. It’s intensive reading. Think Ms. Bendick piled on AP World, with APUSH, and AP Psych. It’s reading heavy. But the conversations are amazing. If you’re someone who loves to talk about why we exist or what the purpose of life is, or simply Gryffindor v. Ravenclaw, this is your place. You will leave here able to think, reason, and critically evaluate. Ultimately, that’s what every educated person needs to be able to do.
Pros:
- This is an incredible education
- Both campuses are in fantastic locations
- You will leave with an ability to reason, think, and evaluate like no one’s business
Cons:
- This is not your regular curriculum
- Little to no choice in classes
- Very small school