Evening star., 1937-12-05
Education by 'Book Learning
Old st. Johns Launches an Educational Experiment.
BY THOMAS r. EENRY,

BY THOMAS r. EENRY.
INTO the turbulent confusion Of
postwar thinking q 200-year -old
Maryland college has stepped
= with new system of mind
training.
The college is ST. Johns, whose old
brick academic buildings and dormi-
tories stand In q tree-shaded campus
across the street from Maryland's
Statehouse at Annapolis and at the
back door Of the Naval Academy.
Henceforth student will be granted
achelor of arts degree for reading,
and passing examinations upon, ll8
books. Formal courses, credits and
most of the other educational mech
aniSms of the modern college are in
the process of being junked.
Marshals knowledge.
The books are the "classics"-the
great landmarks In mans progressive
mastery of life and nature from Homer
and Euclid to Bertrand Russell and
Sigmund Freud. BY mastering them,
it is the hope of DR.. F. Stringfellow
Barr, st. Johns new president, a stu
dent will emerge with a background
of human knowledge as a whole rather
than with one Of detached fragments
little Latin, little chemistry, a
little mathematics, with no discern
ible association between them.
st. Johns will start from the bottom
up. One of the books. for example, is
Ptolemy's "Almagest." For 800 years
this book was the Western Worlds as
tronomy. Ptolemy thought the earth
was the center Of the universe, that
the sun revolved around it, that the
stars were arranged in concentric
spheres. For almost 500 years man
has known that all this Is nonsense.
Why ask boy to struggle over a
rather difficult text. hardly a word of
which is true? For one thing, because
Ptolemys book was compendium of
1000 years Of mans observations and
deductions concerning the heavens.
For another, it was the point from
which Copernicus and Kepler took
their departure toward q conception
of the cosmos which was closer to the
facts. They stood on Ptolemy's
shoulders. After the student has mas
tered the Greek he will be able to fol-
low the thought processes by which
these masters disagreed with him and
went beyond him.
Immediate Followers False.
Ptolemy is followed by the books of
Copernicus and Kepler themselves.
Their conclusions also are, for the most
part, false or inadequate. But with
out them there would have been no
Sir Isaac Newton. The great Eng
lishman sailed from the port of KEEP
ler's "Epitome of Astronomy" on the
far voyage through unknown seas of
thought recorded In the "Principia. ;"
which Is the next step in the students
reading
Newton also was, in large part.
wrong. But Newton provided the
starting point for Riemann. and Rie.
mann for Einstein. Once having car
rled through this reading, it is DR..
Bars idea, a boy will have followed
the course Of astronomical thought
from the Chaldean shepherds to the
observers of flying universes through
the telescopes of the Mount Wilson
observatory Of the Carnegie Institu-
ton
Such a student, it is very likely. will
not know so much actual. factual
astronomy as one who takes an out
line course In some conventional COL
lege. But he will have the back
ground upon which astronomical rea-
soning and observation is based Once
ne masters Riemanns papers on
hyperdimensional geometry he will be
aole to master the mathematics of
Lemaitre, if he happens to be inter-
ested IN 1t, without much trouble.
ana few professional astronomers
Taught by the old methods, can saw
the same.
Proof Difficult.
Ths Is only one of the many fields
covered by the st. Johns reading
course in the same way. The fact
that the earth revolves around the SIN
is matter of common knowledge
Hardly any civilized person alive TO-
- 4SeAoAs ~ ouL prove IL. In
what respect was Ptolemy wrong?
The chances are that not one in q
hundred Of this years college grad.
yates could defend the thesis, They
lake the word of Copernicus and of
newton. Not long ago the question WAS
raised at a gathering of half dozen
graduate chemists here in Washington
They were men of more than ordinary
attainments in mathematics and phvs-
lcs All admitted frankly that thew
could not start from scratch and prove
that the earth was not stationary. with
the sun revolving around it. Not one
OF them ever had read Ptolemv,s
"Almagest" or even Newton's "Prin.
clpia." They had taken somebody's
word for it.
But the st. Johns graduate of the
future will be able to prove it. He
will have followed through the ages
the same course Of thought as did
the men whose word the rest of us
must take for heliocentric planetary
system.
Few living Americans. it is safe to
say, have read very many of the
classics" included in DR.. Barr's list.
Most have heard Of them and taken
them for granted. Probably the num-
Der of persons in Washington who