As this year's Colloquium Director, it is my pleasure to announce an exciting development. In addition to lectures, seminars, and cultural activities, the H.Lyman Stebbins Colloquium [at Magdalen College] has inaugurated a four-year, revolving cycle of readings, events, and excursions devoted to American history and culture.
The faculty's decision this year to take a more formal approach to history arose from the actual condition of incoming students. It will come as a surprise to no one that the level of general education in high school students has fallen steadily over the last few years. The "three R's" are not the only area of concern. Students often demonstrate an astounding ignorance of history and culture — even of events and people in their own lifetimes.
Having spent the last decade in Europe, I couldn't help but notice a radical difference between my students here in America and the young people I met overseas. Any French university student would be able — and eager — to boast about French history and cultural achievements. A young Dane would very politely answer any question you had about Danish history, although he or she might wonder why you were interested. An Irish student could rattle off not only the names of Ireland's poets, but some snippets of their poetry as well.
The faculty agreed that if history was going to be done at Magdalen College, it had to share the same spirit and method as every other tutorial. It had to make use of primary texts to examine opinion; it had to articulate first principles and reveal the fundamental notions that give rise to and inform a culture.
History already serves as the framework of a large part of the Program of Studies. Consider, for example, the historical progression of readings in the astronomy tutorial: Ptolemy, Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler; or the movement from ancient to modern political philosophy between freshman and sophomore years. Magdalen College students may not get the particulars of history in packaged form, but they are well-versed in the essential questions that have driven human history. It would be fair to say that any Magdalen College graduate can comfortably discuss the difference between ancient, modern, and postmodern perspectives.
The problem is greater than the mere lack of information. A liberal arts education unfolds through dialogue, and always, there is the dialogue with culture, the culture into which we were born and grew up and whose notions we have breathed in without any reflection until that day when someone calls them up before our eyes. Understanding the history and mythology of one's own culture is a pre-requisite of the Socratic enterprise. You can't educate in a void.
Hence, the faculty has decided to make use of Colloquium time as a kind of "American experience." This experience will be spread out over a four-year period with each of the eight semesters dedicated to a particular epoch in American life. In keeping with the College's pedagogical method, original documents serve as the basis for seminar discussions. The faculty has also elected to take greater advantage of the College's New England location. This year, students will visit Plymouth Rock and Salem; next year, they will follow Boston's famous Freedom Trail which traces the history of the American Revolution. The Colloquium will also be scheduling guest lecturers, films, and documentaries touching on American themes.
At present, students are well into their first semester of American studies as they focus on the discovery and colonization of the New World. Readings for the semester have been bound together in the aptly-titled City on a Hill. In these texts, students come face-to-face with the Europeans who first set foot in America.
Our hope is that this series will enable the students to be well suited to discuss topics of American history in order to better understand their place in history and to come to know themselves in relationship to God, culture, and the world.
