The scholars of St. John's.

Universal education from dies, students learn what your own progress to help. But not everywhere: The American St. John's College offers timeless knowledge from philosophy to physics. Who wants to do this flight, has four years of an extreme Lesepensum.

 

If Christopher Nelson will explain what education does not mean for him, he tells the story of his son. The hit on the search for a dean at a college, the umgarnte him: "My job is to take you the best product to make in the market can be sold," he said. "You're raw, I'm the producer. Together we have a product you make that we can sell."

"One should think he sold cars - but it was about education," says Nelson. Education as a commodity, students as a material, which is responsible for a horrific Christopher Nelson. He is soon 18 years since President of the St. John's College in Annapolis in the U.S. state of Maryland. He is the master of a campus on which education is lived as to hardly any other place. "Great Books" is the bachelor's program, read only the classics - and in all disciplines.

From Homer to Hegel and Heisenberg

It is a program intended to remind the old scholars of Leonardo da Vinci, to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: You had a universal education, were experts in mathematics and medicine, as in the free arts and philosophy - what is today little more is possible. Science specializes in all disciplines increasingly, fragmented RTD knowledge dominated the study, the subjects of diversity is growing steadily. A look at the
Higher Education Compass of the rectors shows: Solo at German universities, there are about 8900 undergraduate and 4700 further study offers, fissured into many hundreds of individual subjects of adventure education to future energy sources.

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In contrast, at St. John's College for decades, and the same program. It is as timeless as the classics themselves, the students come for four years in the small town about 40 miles east of Washington - four years for the reading of the epochal works in politics and society, philosophy and theology, history, literature, mathematics and science .

"An adventure called Felicitas Steinhoff studying in St. John's. She has about two years before the program as one of the few international students completed. "St. John's will rather than underdog among elite universities viewed," she says, "no wonder: There is only one program."

The seminars start at the roots of Western thought: Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Homer. The course then follows the chronology of history, from ancient Greece is next to the Roman Empire, then to the Middle Ages, with authors such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. In the third year, works and theories of the 17th and 18 Century in the heart, before the fourth and last year waiting for the biggest challenges - Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger.

Extensive knowledge of education instead of rubble

The seminars are accompanied by courses in the first two years the students kettledrums Ancient Greek, two years after French. In mathematics and science complete the development of research to, from Copernicus to Heisenberg, from Euclid to Einstein. Between 25 and 30 hours per week the students spend in class, her Lesepensum is immense.

Marx's Capital, it had in six days have to read, says Steinhoff. "And that went alone Hegel ten pages, two hours to complete, let alone three sides of relativity theory."

Excursions into foreign professional courses - in Germany, is rare and a matter of personal initiative, a voluntary evening program. The conversion to Bachelor and Master makes the view over the garden fence of their own discipline even harder, education loses its value. With its "Fundamental Studies" for students of all subjects is the private University of Witten / Herdecke a big exception - the majority of German universities is a "studium generale" in the humanistic sense only as a marginal program for guest.

For St. John's on the other hand is the view over the rim of the basic principle. Not only is the bandwidth, the end of the study differs from other universities: There are no lectures in the seminars, the students, all have the same read and discuss on this basis. All courses and seminars are required, who is not a course, the whole year again. Written exams are not available. The students will write essays and oral test, "but rather discuss instead of querying means," said Felicitas Steinhoff.

"At parties will still be discussed on Philosophy"

The instructors are open each session with a single question, after which participants from professors whose word has no other weight than that of the students. It is not inconceivable that someone with no preparation in the discussion part Steinhoff says: "You know after ten minutes in every room, you will then be verbally kicked maneuvers."

"TRAIN to immortality"

DDP

The celebrated Antrittsvorlesung 1789 at the University of Jena - Friedrich Schiller as a history professor, the humanists against the "bread scholar" defended

"Our students shape their own education by taking the profound questions of the greatest thinkers," says President Nelson. That was the idea of founding: 1937 came Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan after Annapolis, which was then already a nearly 250-year-old college geschröpft of the Great Depression, before the closure was.

"It made them worry that education is increasingly taught in fragments, and was geared produce workers instead of educated women and men who have their place as responsible citizens in a democracy can take," said Nelson. That had not changed to this day: studying, in order to find a job. "But we do not live to work - we work to ensure a good life."

It sounds like a romantic vision, after a nearly utopian idyll of free education, reviving the ancient idea of education, based on virtue and not on expertise is. Although the study financially with an annual fee of just $ 40,000 less than free, graduate Steinhoff supports the impression of a Bildungsoase: "At parties, is still debated about philosophy."

"Our kind of education is valuable in the workplace"

Nelson also assured that we take care of itself, the approval of financial reasons, not failure. 60 percent of students finance their studies with scholarships from the university, not by power but by need basis.

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Photo:
Video: JKR

Monet, Picasso and Klimt?

But, quite free from the purpose and benefits of education is also in St. John's not. "I believe that now, especially in the economic situation, our kind of education very valuable in the workplace," says Nelson. Discuss, translate, write, experiment, analytical thinking - the study of each in St. John's. "Everyone who finishes here can very quickly learn new material, and that is in demand."

Felicitas Steinhoff now studying in Morocco International Relations and Diplomacy with a focus on Northern Africa and the Middle East. "Above all, we are one: versatile and quite eloquently," she says confidently.