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A genuine liberal education begins by encountering for ourselves
the ideas and questions that help define our intellectual heritage.
The books at the heart of learning at St. John’s are among the richest
sources of that heritage.
These books are timeless and timely; they illuminate the
persisting questions of human existence and also have great rel-
evance to our contemporary problems. They therefore enter directly
into our everyday lives and speak to us as freshly as when they first
spoke. They change our minds, move our hearts, and touch our
spirits. What they have to tell us is not something of merely aca-
demic concern, remote from our real interests. At St. John’s, books
are not treated reverently or digested whole; they are dissected,
mulled over, interpreted, doubted, sometimes rejected, sometimes
accepted. They provoke us to think for ourselves.
The mode in which this process unfolds is classroom discus-
sion. With a faculty-student ratio of 1 to 8, class size ranges from
12
to 16 students in tutorials and laboratories and from 17 to 21 in
seminars. All classes are discussion classes, so that students partici-
pate directly and actively in their own education. Examinations are
oral and individual. Students’ tutors—as members of the faculty are
called—meet with them twice a year in conferences to formally
evaluate their academic progress.
In brief, the St. John’s program is a means of discovery,
a process by which students and tutors unite to ask, with persistence
and curiosity, fundamental questions about our world, our commu-
nities, and our lives—and, in doing so, come closer to answering
the question “Who am I?”
What is the
St. John’s
program?
What is a liberal
education?
A liberal education frees
students by providing
them the means to
understand and assess
both themselves and the
world, as well as to
interpret the symbols—
words, numbers, notes,
and pictures—that
describe that world. A
liberal education gives
individuals the ability
to critique—and thereby
preserve—a free and
democratic society.