When I was in Santa Fe a week or two ago, I had occasion to drop in on a seminar about Henry V at St. John’s College. (St. John’s maintains two campuses, the original one in Annapolis and the Land-of-Enchantment one in Santa Fe.) I’ve long been interested in St. John’s. I first learned about it when I was in college myself. I went to a latitudinarian backwater where the only thing required of a student was a pulse and someone in the background with a checkbook. At St. John’s, I heard, everything was required, near enough. There was room for outside study groups, but basically everyone in every class was reading, looking at, or listening to the same thing at the same time. It sounded simultaneously amazing and forbidding.
After college, I didn’t think much about St. John’s until I met the woman I later married. She, canny lass that she was, gave Harvard a miss in favor of St. John’s, and, according to her, it was far more amazing than forbidding. (What did it was a flyer from the college that she received: “Next year, the following teachers are returning to St. John’s: Homer, Plato, Aristotle,” etc.) Having served briefly on St. John’s Board of Visitors, I am convinced she is right.