An Apologist for St. Johns College
HOOK, SIDNEY
An Apologist for St. Johns College Hook Answers the Saturday Evening Post By Sidney Hook ,L.A rctitw pnMiehed last year, Mr. Alexander 3ELlW referred to education mi "• field of die"jjjjjjj,...
...Bfcyears of experience wJth the great books and J...
...John's proajjp I*t under way, and in season and out after it •11 let up, its protagonist urged its universal adoptHPby liberal art colleges throughout the nation...
...John's program have publicly said and pretending that the critics have distorted, out of malice or invincible ignorance, what is crystal clear...
...My charge that the orientation of the St...
...Pringle is obviously uncomfortable about imposing...
...His recent book on education, •fjjamtioa Between Twa Worlds," contains a groItsrueiy misleading exposition of John Dewey's phij^tfkj eawiad to such lengths that in a crucial f-r quoted from Daway'a writings, Meiklejohn ttSB.pt* to palm off Ait italics as Dewey's own, thus creatine, by the fallacy of accent, a false impression si Dewey's meaning...
...In what puiports to be an "outside . . . objective" srticle on St...
...For what will the nation's graduate schools do if a Ph.D...
...Pringle B» to such desperate lengths...
...My criticism of the curriculum of St...
...Who can deny this...
...The war has nothing to do with its educational justification...
...Alexander 3ELlW referred to education mi "• field of die"jjjjjjj, often merited by a careless end even Smjtjojp misrepresentation...
...John's few alumni, s scheme hst really been devised whereby boys learn to work and to think...
...John's educators •fjm propose that their curriculum lie taken as a sHU foil''all liberal arts colleges, and that their sjfcrsnees which seem to indicate the contrary are Wed out of context by their critics...
...ihe truth is that even before, the St...
...I do not know of a single critic of its program from John Dewey down who would have raisM pea or voice against St...
...It is everybody's business, including jtsfnsllsU sad reporters...
...But there is no need for Mr...
...degree it no longer essential to a teaching career...
...One final word...
...Headmaitert of private schools are "naturally slarmed" about St...
...John's curriculum...
...Only the logically impossible is unconceivable...
...The critics apparently can't stand the ** that 280 students out of h million should attend %'jf*»'a and want to liquidate it...
...Pringle writes: "Stringfellow Barr has specifically ststed that this was no 'grandiose plan to save the nation,' but be was constantly quoted out of context to prove that a conspiracy existed...
...John's, in hit radio address for Education for Freedom, Inc., expresses the common doctrine of all St...
...John's devotee that by studying the Greek classics, students could learn that Roosevelt is not a Communist and understand the W.P.A...
...This does not mean the cult of the immediate, a chase after fashions, belief that the world was born yesterday, refusal to learn from the past—as the familiar caricatures run...
...His defense does them •¦'injustice...
...Pringle shouts: "Stop thief...
...John's progrsm was launched, Scott Buchanan in an article In the Amherst Graduate Quarterly, February 1938, indicated that whert the course took shape, it would be open to students at the end of their second year in high school...
...For they may rediscover the truth that, without neglecting the past wherever it is relevant to the present, the best way to understand the modern world is to approach it in terms of its own problems...
...John's...
...This absolves Mr...
...TllKRK is internal evidence in his article that Mr...
...and accuses critics of St...
...John's...
...John't but for any other scheme...
...Utters from readers ran into the hundred...
...That we need such a philosophy goes without saying...
...John's of quoting out of context...
...The character of Mr...
...He writes: "Conceivably, although no final conclusion can be drawn from St...
...The St...
...Pringle's defense of St...
...John's is the only college in the country which is making i proportionate effort to adapt means that may succeed in achieving the ends of liberal educstion" (tcript of Februsry 7, 1944, my italics...
...VoL XXVII, No...
...Pringle s article...
...Incidentally, the nation's graduate schools are more interested in getting properly trained students than in whether their teachers hold doctor's (agree...
...The phrase quoted from Bair will be found on page 9 of his report to the Board of Governors of the College, May 1941...
...Let it alone...
...John's College is the .Safierdag A'vemiif Post of October 14th illustrates the kind of tendancious misstatement and mis^presentation which—we agree with Mr...
...John's educators to tslk this way represents something won in behalf of educational wisdom...
...Citstions can be multiplied from the writings of every leading defender of the St...
...Instead of addressing himself to this question, Mr...
...John's College is not a "grandiose design to ssve the nation...
...John's administrators have declared that such a criterion is an extremely vulgar one by which to evaluate the work of a liberal arts education...
...John't...
...But to compel St...
...After giving account of the St...
...jbae who has read the IiteraturV of St...
...John's College ia the Saturday Kvtmimg Post of October 14th, Mr...
...But the issue is the relative educational merits of alternative liberal art college programs, including not only those in existence but those proposed by the critics of St...
...John's College if it •ad represented itself as an educational venture trying to work oat and test a special program in order to ns what educational consequences would ensue for the type of students it admitted to its classes...
...This they do by coolly disregarding what leading administrators of the St...
...Heary Pringle writes s strong defense of its theory and practice...
...why not give Rosa's a chance...
...Meiklejohn knows S3 he speaks...
...Meiklejohn — itandi ia th« way of fruitful discussion Education is much too serious a subject to be left u educators...
...Pringle believes it is more effective to use a pole twenty-four hundred years long...
...Talk about scratching your right ear with your left hand i Mr...
...To cover up his shameless distortion, Mr...
...ilsluil?*' M*rk v*n Doren» wh(>9e book on Liberal (•cation.i, recommended by St...
...So, Mr...
...Here is part of the BW which will enable the reader to judge for him^Bf"at St...
...John's College est undertaken because it was (and is) being proposed by its advocates as the only educational plan that can orevMe a liberal education in America today...
...john's Hp will recognise, at once that if Mr...
...John's esrriealum m The New Leader, 1 wish to indicate at* Heary f. Pringle's apologia for St...
...Such practices are neither cricket tut scholarship yet, as Mr...
...Conceivably...
...In essentials, as a model for the reorganization of all liberal srts colleges...
...John's curriculum was primarily to the past and that the issues and problems of modern culture and thought were neglected, Mr...
...He combines this with purely gratuitous innuendoes about the motives of those who criticise the educational theory behind St...
...John's College is its eduea^Bjj right to existence—not the validity of its pro*"»¦ si the solution of the problem of a liberal arts '•flcnlum...
...Pringle has deliberstely twisted the phrase to mean that the St...
...Stringfellow Barr, President of St...
...John's program...
...John's program it open to sverage 16-year olds boyt who have completed two yeart of high school Mr...
...John's educston as •¦thoritotive statement of their purposes, we have sn even more extreme statement...
...Pringle's article is a mixture of misinformation and evasion...
...Moi timer Adler, who is one of the philosophical godfathers of St...
...John's program is conspicuously lacking In thest traits...
...Incidentally, reference to Aristotle in discussing modern political problems, whenever it is relevsnt, is much more likely to be educationally fruitful than jumping to the war snd Hitler when analysing a text of Aristotle...
...He is misinformed...
...He is saying that even if St...
...Proof: he visited a seminar on Aristotle and found that the discussion had "rather little to do with Aristotle" but wandered off to Hitler and the war...
...He winds up ^a • plea that since more than a million students Wenrolled in our colleges, surely "there should be ^p,f°t several other institutions of learning at the 5B{tlm*i" including St...
...John's tallage was cried up by ita partisans not as a college far tee elite, nor for some specially selected group which wanted the kind of training it offered, but as s ssMege for ail students who were educable at the mllege level...
...Meiklejohn rightfully says ^ Saclores, all too common in contemporary educauaaal discussion...
...John's curriculum and its propossl to plsnt the great books at the center of the college curriculum, he adds: "It will take time to get the propossl accepted...
...It means a quest for significance, truth and direction in one of the great crises in history, in a place and time where it is both more difficult and important to find them than ever before...
...sp/Pringie's bold strategy is to deny this truth...
...John'n lacked even the virtues of its defects...
...Until ir is accepted everywhere in America, we shall lack the right to say that liberal education exists among us" (page 149, my italics...
...John's program is not designed to be the model for universal reorganization of American liberal arts colleges...
...I add a few particulars...
...John's curriculum is a modest little experiment snd not a program to be adopted...
...The •jarr of his article is told that St...
...Becsusr It refers to my criticism of the St...
...It means to continue in our owii day what the best practitioners of the liberating arts did in theirs...
...Pringle now claims that the St...
...In fact, si sn educational experiment it would have been wellomed as supplying us with additional data for formu'•ting a philosophy and program of liberal education for general application...
...John's plan ia proposed for all liberal art colleges, Mr...
...He is speaking of the political state of the nation...
...The indifference of St...
...Pringle tells us about St John's students who have made good in the world (not about those who haven't), despite the fact that on other occasions, St...
...And we are note told—and my guess is that we shall hear more along these lines—that the reason modern social, political, cultural and economic probjems are not studied, the reason mod/sm art and literature are ignored, the reason that such disproportionate emphasis is placed upon the past, is that this is the best way to understand the world we live in...
...John's College it "reason," "logic," "critical thought" or their synonyms, their discussion of criticisms of the St...
...Only indirectly do they ever acknowledge the validity of criticism...
...In the belief that the clarification of issues in present-day education ia of concern not only to educators but le the community at large, we have asked Professor Hook to comment on Mr...
...judginii by the reasons* they provoked, Professor Sidney Hook's articles "Ballyhoo at St...
...Conceivably this it true not only for St...
...John's College to whether s teacher has a Ph.D...
...Despite the fact that almost evary third word in the writings of most protagonists of St...
...John's T^J"* as a model for the reorganization of liberal !•**•» ia tkt United States" (Magazine Digest, Nov...
...Pringle is aware of his role of apologist for St...
...challenge Mr...
...5, page 62, my italics...
...is enough to strike terror into the hearts of traditional pedagogues...
...Aristotle and Appolonius on "fledgelings...
...It would be a pity if St...
...and act distort the public record, that he will >tsW the issues fairly, and that he will not play the rats of aa apologist In the cloak of a disinterested iseairer...
...Lsmis Post Dispatch, the Kiucationml Digest snd widely commented oa in other periodicals: and we are still tiling orders for back numbers...
...Pringle's ^V**Jly declares the intentions of its administrators Kflefenders, then what they have been writing for limply makes no sense...
...Ike articles were reprinted la the St...
...arts, freed of the elective jungle and the ^Jjww text-books, have convinced us that St...
...John's may be gauged from the foregoing...
...John's which, he reminds HMtonot after all accommodate mor- than 280 stuHe gives the impression that what is at stake ¦At discussion of St...
...But he extenustes it as a war measure, tentatively adopted, and not an integral part of the plan...
...Nor are they especially hostile to St...
...Long before the war, indeed, during the very first year the new St...
...He contemptuously dismissea, where he dees not ignore, the criticisms made by Professor Hook in his New Leader articles...
...John's accelerated four yiars program in three—which is a war measure and widely in use eltewhere—because this moans hard work for their proteges...
...Pringle does not give the reference, for if any one consulted it, he would find that Barr is not speaking of the desirability of the universal adoption of the St...
...Jonas College" aad "Great Books, the Liberal Tradition aad Progressive Teaching" ia The New Leader of Mhy Mth aad Jaea Ird have made educational history...
...It is in this sense that St...
...This is on the same level as the statement of another St...
...In denying that the St...
...On everything important Mr...
...Pringle from the odious necessity of considering reasoned argument...
...Pringle finds falte and "amusing...
...John's educators: "Liberal education is developed only when a curriculum can be dtvised which is the same for sll men, and should be given to all men...
...This is apparent in his glaring contradictions, snd In the wessel words he employs in commending the program...
...Pringle to point out what context hat been violated which will modify the plain meaning of these paitaget...
...John's educators believe: JHp1 ^om Mr...
...John's...
...Their favorite technique Is to impugn the motives of the critics and to assume that they alone are interested in an appropriate liberal education for our time...
...John's program were universally adopted, it would not safeguard the republic, and that "the proper purpose of liberal education" is not to support free governments, even though such support may be one of its consequences...
...But we have a right to extort from an honest reporter professing to give an "tattide objective account" that he will present the far...
Vol. 27 • December 1944 • No. 48
