Is St. John's College the Antidote To What Ails Us Politically, Culturally, and Educationally?

Forbes - 8/17/2011 @ 6:48AM |11,574 views I love St. Johns College (full disclosure: I received my Masters from the school in 2002). As a lover, it fits my needs perfectly: a deep listener, a keen learner, respectful, patient, tolerant, seeking out the greatest works and biggest questions, and, yes, ironic. You need irony to be my lover and to be the great books school. The tenor and direction of most academic institutions, like the tenor and direction of our mass culture, like the tenor and direction of most lovers, is away from big questions towards smaller, niche, ephemera. Swimming against that tide seems peculiar, even absurd, not to mention impractical. But, like St. Johns, I embrace that strangeness (like an Irish monk studiously copying the great works of western civilization as the barbarians knocked at the gate, except I am lousy at Latin and Greek). Fortunately, there are a few other anomalous souls left in America, who, like the rebel readers in Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451, seek out difficult works for their own betterment and for the improvement of their families, communities, and country. I strongly believe that the two campuses of St. Johns College (Santa Fe and Annapolis) are the civilized answer to the uncivil sophistry that Bradbury foresaw. With that optimistic backdrop, and my yearly pilgrimage to St Johns Summer Classics firmly in mind, I sat down for a Johnny-to-Johnny dialogue with St. Johns College Santa Fe president, Michael Peters. Mike was one of my two tutors during a recent weeklong seminar on Joseph Conrads dense, rewarding spy novel, The Secret Agent. As a former U.S. Army Colonel, Chief of Staff at the United States Military Academy at West Point, attach at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Council on Foreign Relations, he seemed like the perfect person to discuss the relationship between St. Johns unique pedagogy and my broader concerns about education and public policy. JAMES CROTTY (JC): Mike, theres an objective and comprehensive international test now, the Program for International Student Assessment (or PISA), that 15-year-olds around the world take every three years. On the 2009 test, China came out number one and the U.S. was way down. We ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math. We spend so much as a country on education, but we are falling further and further behind other nations. Is there something intrinsic to our current democracy that is failing us in the education realm? Why are we continually failing at these educational benchmarks? MICHAEL PETERS (MP): I guess there are a couple of things that strike me. First, I think the Chinese have demonstrated they are effective test-takers. Their educational system is directed towards that kind of evaluation. Its funny because I was just having a conversation with a woman who works for UNESCO in China. She was complaining that the Chinese that she works with, you cant give them an open-ended task. You have to lay out absolutely everything for them. Tell them exactly how they need to do the business and then they can do it exactly that way. But when it comes to creativity, to flexibility, to critical thinking, their skills are really lacking. As for the United States, I think its obviously very, very complicated, but one of the things that has made it more of a challenge is that increasingly over the last generation we have put more and more obligations on schools that are not necessarily directly connected to the classroom. Schools have become the

social center of students lives. They feed them in the morning for breakfast and they take care of them during the day, and then they have after-school activities, and then, weve done things in the abstract and in the particular that are probably the right thing to do dealing with students with disabilities and those kinds of things but that put a great demand on school systems. And I think that makes it harder for our schools to focus completely on the education part in the classroom. JC: In Europe, at least in Germany when I visited, they do not understand this. They get a kick out of, for example, how American sports culture is tied up with ones school. Because they do their sports in clubs. They do not do sports through the schools. Because schools are where you learn and then you leave. We have a very strong emotional attachment to our schools, built through sports, other extracurriculars, cultural attractions, fundraising, reunions, and so on. MP: Oh, absolutely. JC: And maybe that is a positive thing. Yet despite that strong emotional attachment, I have this continual experience that American students are not as smart as they were even in my era. I am aware that this is a curmudgeonly tendency in me as I get older, but the PISA results verify that American students are not keeping up with our competitors. Of course, Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffet and others are generously investing a lot of money trying to solve this problem on the primary and secondary school levels. And I was involved in this movement myself in the South Bronx of New York City in terms of mentoring inner city young men; I am completing postproduction on a documentary about that experience called Crottys Kids. But it seems to me that the focus of Gates, Buffett and others is in researching how to be a better teacher, teaching teachers how to teach, better principals, all that stuff. But the St. Johns pedagogy is not focused on these things that seem to be at the center of the greater education debate. We are doing something different here. What is that thing that is different? MP: At St. Johns we have one undergraduate program which is distinctly interdisciplinary, and based on the fundamental liberal arts. We are the epitome of the liberal arts college. And because we only have that one program, that one major, were laser focused. Were not trying to create a business major. Were not trying to create fine arts major. Were not trying to create a sociology major. Were focused on this interdisciplinary approach, and were also focused on reading the original text, and bringing those texts into the classroom, and asking students to read them deeply, to think about them, and then be willing to talk about them and write about them, and under the guidance and mentoring of a tutor, but not to be professed to by the tutor. And the reason we call them tutors and not professors is that we dont want them to profess. We want the students to, in a sense, be their own teachers. So, thats the nature of our pedagogy. And we start out, we do it unashamedly, on Western texts. Not because there isnt value in Eastern texts or Middle Eastern texts we have a graduate program that looks at Eastern and Middle Eastern texts but because, in four years, you can only do so much. Whats undermined the quality of education in general is weve gotten into the Chinese menu view of course selection. You take one from column A, one from column B, one from column C, and they may or may not be connected with each other. Theres no synergy there. But at St. Johns College we start out with the Greeks. We start out with the Greeks in math by studying Euclid. We start out with the Greeks in laboratory science by looking at Aristotle. We start out with the Greeks in seminar. We study Greek language. And then we progress through, so that all of those classes are connected to one another and build on one another and show the connectivity, the very nature of all these things. And rather than distinguishing and demonstrating how

theyre different from one another, were trying to show how they really are related to one another. JC : Exactly. Now, I drank the Kool-Aid. I graduated from the St. Johns College Santa Fe Graduate Institute. I attend St. Johns College Santa Fes Summer Classics every July. I host and lead Great Books discussions in the St. Johns shared inquiry manner. I am about as converted as you can get. And I believe St. Johns is the answer to the dogmatic KnowNothingism sweeping this country. In your parting remarks today at the Summer Classics Week One closing luncheon, you said the same thing, but with an interesting fillip. You talked of St. Johns as the antidote to the opinion-based nature of our current national discourse, where people have answers when they dont even know the questions. Why is St. Johns the antidote to our noisy polarized discourse? MP: Its an antidote because it provides an opportunity to ask questions and to question answers, and to think in terms of knowledge as opposed to accumulation of information. I think one of the things, again, that is unfortunate and were being driven to it more and more by the nature of the internet and other kinds of things is that you can find almost anything you want thats a piece of information. All you have to do is Google it. But accumulating a bunch of information doesnt translate into knowledge. It just means you know how to Google. And theres some value in that, but its not enough, and you have to really translate that. And so the example of St. Johns and the opportunity at St. Johns is one of the things that we need to raise the visibility of. JC: I know youd love to have the problem of too many students and you need fifty campuses. But there is a Zen koan built into the St. Johns pedagogical model. That is, you must want to learn this way. It is a self-selecting marketing strategy. You could drive a lot of horses to the well of St. Johns College, but it wouldnt work for them unless they had the hunger for what you have to offer. To get people to come to St. Johns, you almost have to miraculously develop the hunger for St. Johns in the culture at large. Is that a fair statement or is it too strong? MP: Its a bit strong. There are plenty of people out there who would, who are, searching for a St. Johns education. They just dont know its available. And so our big task is to make folks aware of our existence and what it is we do. And Im persuaded that despite the overwhelming counterculture, if you will, or the lack of appreciation of what St. Johns is, there are more than enough people out there who would benefit from, and would contribute to, a St. Johns education, that we can fill our seats. JC: How do you go about doing that? MP: Its actually one of the things that we struggle with most. At the retail level, if you will, we have a pretty aggressive admissions program. We do a lot of the things that other colleges and universities do to get in front of prospective students. But in todays world and in todays economy, its an even bigger challenge because the overwhelming sense of the culture is that, Why do you go to college? You go to college to get a job. JC: Correct. And then theres the 90/10 rule that just came out in June from the Department of Education. It has to do with loan repayment, but more broadly it is the idea that a student, when he or she is done, must get a job in their field of study, whatever that is. St. Johns, as you said, is a liberal arts college, so its not a trade school, where, with the degree, you can go out and, say, cut hair. Its training in how to think, how to listen. So

how does that model of education square with the gainful employment mantra that seems to be gaining steam? MP: I think that education is, at its root, learning. And at St. Johns we want to attract, we want to foster, and we want to move into the rest of society people who love to learn. And learning, first and foremost, for its own sake, but also because of how that learning can be put into action in society. But the way you put your learning into action is not just in your vocation, you put it into action in your family, you put it into action in your community, you put it into action in your church or your synagogue or your mosque, and so education and higher education is not just about preparing you for the workforce. Although I would argue that the St. Johns education is an excellent preparation for the workforce. Not for a particular thing, but to give you the kinds of skills that it takes to operate in a modern economy. JC: Could you name three or four of those skills that a Johnny will have that the average kid graduating from Northwestern or the University of Chicago or somewhere else might not have? MP: Well, I wouldnt say that people who are graduating from Northwestern or some other very fine college wouldnt necessarily have, but the skills that I think our students demonstrate are, first of all, the ability to read intensely and deeply, to think critically, to write coherently and cogently, and to be intellectually courageous. Because one of the things that we demand because of the nature of our program is that youve got to take the whole program. You cant just focus on the things that you think youre good at or that youre comfortable with. If you dont like math, you still must take math at St. Johns College. If you dont like language, you still must take language at St. Johns College. And what that builds and what that requires is an intellectual courage to be willing to put yourself out there into areas where youre fundamentally uncomfortable and be willing to take that on. That courage then translates into your ability to do just about anything you want because you feel confident enough to say, I can get into this. I can learn this, whatever it is I have to learn, whatever skill I have to learn, and I can then practice it. And so when somebody says, What do you do with a St. Johns education? It sounds kind of trite, but I say, Anything you want! Because youve built those kind of skills that gives you the capacity to take on almost any intellectual challenge. JC: Thats why I keep coming back here every summer because I start to fall into the mental trap that Im not trained as a specialist. This occurs a lot, in weaker moments: Well, Im not a good enough writer because I was never trained in writing. I never got a degree in writing. Ive only taken one writing course. This is the courage-sapping doubt that the culture in a way feeds us. You need to be a specialist, you need to get a Ph.D. or some higher credential. And when I come back to St. Johns every summer, when I get back into the flow of things, it builds back that intellectual confidence. MP: I completely agree with that. Nevertheless, we had this issue: not all Johnnies are able to get into the work force. There seems to be a disconnect with employers. JC: Yes. The graduates Ive talked to say employers dont fully get the person thats sitting there, whos gone through the St. Johns process. This is a critical thinker. This is a person whos actually more useful than you realize, even though he or she doesnt have a Ph.D. in math. That does seem to be an issue.

MP: It certainly is. And I think that one of the things that we have been paying a lot of attention to over the time that Ive been here is to help our students make that transition from the college to the rest of their lives, and, in particular, into their work lives. And to help them develop the skills to translate what theyve done here into something that an employer would recognize. It is a matter of translation. JC: What are the things you would teach a new graduate on how to go about making that transition? MP: The biggest thing is to help them recognize how they can explain what theyve done to someone who hasnt had a St. Johns education, to help an employer understand the amount of writing theyve done, the amount of reading theyve done, the breadth of what theyve studied. And the fact that and this is a common misunderstanding of what a St. Johns education is it isnt all just sittin around in a classroom talking. Youre doing hands-on stuff. Youre doing experiments. Youre going to the board and demonstrating, so youre learning briefing skills by going to the board and demonstrating a proposition in Euclid. And youre learning to operate in different languages. Youre learning to operate in French and Greek. Youre also learning to operate in a mathematical language. And youre learning to operate in a musical language. And I think that we have to help our graduates be able to do that translation of what we do here. The other part is fundamental practical skills. How do you write a resume? How do you conduct yourself in an interview? How do you perform in an interview? A lot more of that nuts and bolts stuff because its true for any young person going into the workforce for the first time, but especially because of the intensity of our program, because of the commitment that our students make to it, they keep their eye on that ball, theyre not spending as much time thinking, Okay, well what am I going to do with this? How am I going to translate this? And I think we have an obligation to help them do that. JC: We talked a lot about time in our discussion of Conrads The Secret Agent. So, lets loop back. Now youre a tutor at St. Johns and you are the president of the Santa Fe campus. You are very aware of the pedagogy, the methodology. If you put yourself back into the organizations youve worked for, at West Point, in the special operations division of the Army, at the Council on Foreign Relations, how would that have made you a different boss or employee? MP: Thats a really interesting question. I think that, at its root, I would have been more concerned with the question than the answer. In hierarchical organizations like the military, youre always looking for the solution, but often times youre looking for the solution to the wrong question. One of the things that I really learned from St. Johns is that the most important thing is the question. And getting the question right is the most important exercise. JC: Can an argument be made that the military does not want to ask certain fundamental questions because it would threaten its current level of funding? MP: Its hard to generalize about a big institution like the military. I suspect that the reason for not asking fundamental questions is the pace of the activity that youre engaged in. Its not that military officers arent capable of reflection, but theyre engaged in an activity that is so overwhelming, so time-sensitive, so urgent that you dont have a lot of time for reflection. And one of the things that the army does, probably as well, and maybe better than any of the services, is it really tries, especially with its career officers, to provide

time for them to take a year off, go to school. It gives them time to reflect and to think about what theyve been engaged in. But in the day-to-day, its just very very difficult. JC: Would the St. Johns method of shared inquiry be a bad fit in the military culture?

MP: Not all of life is seminar. At the end of the day in almost any activity that youre engaged in, youve gotta make a decision, and youre always gonna make that decision with limited information. JC: To paraphrase Vladimir in The Secret Agent, action has to be taken.

MP: Yeah. And so the St. Johns method is not something that you would impose on an organization as the way to operate because it wouldnt be effective in that sense. Nevertheless, part of making the best decisions is asking the right questions. Focus more on making sure that youre asking the right question, rather than answering the wrong question and coming up with a solution to the wrong question. JC: Since 9/11, what are the questions were not asking? Whats the question Americans arent asking, or the Department of Defense is not asking, or the government in general is not asking about our foreign policy threats? MP: I think the question we always have to be asking ourselves as Americans is, What is the balance between protecting our self physically and protecting our values and our principles? That is what makes us different from another country. From my own personal understanding in the wake of 9/11, we probably erred a little too much on the side of physical protection, and we made some compromises. JC: Guantanamo Bay and things like that? MP: That kinda thing. I mean broadly speaking. JC: The Patriot Act. MP: Yeah, I mean aspects of it. Obviously, we needed to do some things. 9/11 clearly demonstrated that our physical security needed to be improved. And we had to do some things to do that, and we had to take some actions. And some of those things were obviously going to push up against individual rights and other kinds of things, and probably appropriately so. But there wasnt much of a debate about that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. At least not broadly. JC I guess that is what I am saying in a way. Hurry and indecision is something I try to avoid in life now. Even in a genuine crisis like 9/11, the hysterical rhetoric of, We must act now, often has bad consequences. MP: The urgent always tends to crowd out the important. JC: Lets talk strategically a little bit. Put your Council on Foreign Relations hat on. You were a Colonel. You worked with Army Special Forces, Special Ops. And America now has a good idea of what Special Forces can do with the killing of Bin Laden. When George W. Bush said after 9/11, Were going to have a quiet war, I liked that term, quiet war, because I have always believed that if you are going to solve a world problem, do it with a minimal

footprint. And I was shocked when the footprint became so large. Looking back at the policy, would a policy based predominantly on Special Forces, more of a quiet war, have better solved the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan? MP: The invasion of Iraq was a huge strategic blunder in my personal view. The jury is obviously still out, but the positive from our experience in Iraq at this point seems to pale in comparison with the negative. So, yeah, if we were going to do something in Iraq, we would have been far better off to do it quietly, covertly, not with a massive infusion of military force. And I think that Afghanistan is probably the same. And I think that because in the case of Afghanistan we have a fundamental mismatch between what our objectives seem to be and what our resources are to be able to achieve those objectives. I think the idea of building a modern national state in Afghanistan is folly, and if thats what were going to try to do, you cant set an end date on doing it. And it would take a lot more forces and a lot more money to be able to accomplish that. So, yeah, I think that our strategy there ought to be more focused on the counterterrorism aspect and less on the nation-building. JC: But the problem is there is this view on both sides of the aisle that if you have a huge military, you have to use it. There is something self-perpetuating about large organizations like the military. Is that tendency operative within the armed forces? MP: If thats the case, I dont think it comes from the military. I think it comes from the political side. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Allbright, when she was talking about Bosnia and Kosovo, said, What have we got this big military for, if we dont use it? And I think that kind of capacity is the reason that George W. Bush could invade Iraq because he thought he had the capability to do it. The other thing is that (and this is part of the challenge in Afghanistan), by virtue of its organization, by virtue of the nature of what the military does, and by nature of the people who are in it, they have this can-do attitude Yes sir, yes sir, if you ask me to do it, Ill get it done one way or the other you end up asking the military to do things that arent appropriate for the military to do. JC: So, it is a political problem in the sense that its rooted very deeply in the fact that a lot of defense money flows into the districts of elected officials. Lets be honest MP: Well, in the procurement of weapons for sure. JC: Yeah, and thats a big deal because it brings jobs and other benefits. So, how are we ever going to get out of that cycle? MP: Well, I suspect the budget crisis that were facing now is going to put increasing pressure on the defense budget, and frankly, appropriately so from my point of view. And I think that its going to be increasingly difficult to protect the defense budget if youre going to cut Medicare and Social Security. JC: When you look at America right now as a Johnnie, youve read Montesquieu on the fall of the Roman empire are we at a point where we are falling right into the imperial overreach trap that the great scholars of Rome talked about? PM: Theres certainly elements of that and I think again that we have, for a whole variety of reasons, pretty much reached the limits of our resources to be able to do these things. Were going to have to retrench. We dont have any other choice. But I dont think were beyond recovery. Were a large society and population. We are still very, very creative.

Were not where we were in comparison to other countries, but I think part of what we have to recognize is that its not so much that were falling behind, its that others are catching up with us. In the post-World-War-II period, we were the richest, we were the largest, and we dominated. JC: We killed off our economic competitors. PM: Right. And everybody was so far behind us that we could kind of coast along, but we cant continue to coast along, because others, the Chinese, the Europeans, theyre catching up. The world is global and talent flows to where the rewards are the greatest and where the opportunities are the greatest. And I think still for the most part thats the United States. But there are other pockets in the world where talent is interested in flowing, too. Some places in India. Obviously some in China and Europe and others, and so its becoming a more equal world from that point of view. JC: Would you say that were moving into a world where what will separate us from our competitors is not so much our military might but what Joseph Nye called our soft power. Things like education. Will education be the arbiter? PM: Yeah, I think education is one of them, but I think, at its root, its really about the economy. And thats why the big question is how do you build the economy of the future? By having educated people. Again, this is why I think a St. Johns education is so appropriate because jobs are going to be increasingly mobile. Increasingly, folks change jobs five, six times in the course of their working lives. How do you make those kinds of transitions? What are the skills that give you the ability to do that? Well, theyre the kind of skills that you learn at St. Johns College.