Great Books – Catholic Writers Guild

Photo by clarita, morguefile.com

Last month, I introduced this blog series by describing my enthusiastic discovery of Great Books schools, specifically Wyoming Catholic College, which I will be attending in the fall. This month, I bring up some common doubts and challenges I’ve encountered in advocating a classical, Catholic, liberal education.

The Great Books—or a great waste of time?

Over the past year or so, I’ve had many peers, relatives and adult friends ask me what I want to study in college. When I would reply I wanted to attend a Great Books school, their faces would typically go blank. After I would try to explain, their expressions might shift to a mild concern. What was a “Great Books school,” they’d ask? Why didn’t it have any majors—only a liberal arts degree? Wasn’t I worried about not being able to choose my own courses? What did I expect to do for a career, once I finished with this…unusual method of education?

I’ve had trouble explaining my motives fully to my concerned acquaintances. For the full explanation requires a pouring out of my heart. My desire to go to a Great Books school is so wrapped up in my faith, my love of truth and beauty, and my poetic view of the world, that it isn’t reducible to a single sentence—or even a single conversation. But I do want to address these doubts and questions—not least because they have crossed my mind as well. So I will attempt to answer them here, briefly.

What is a Great Books school?

A Great Books college is one which presents an ordered, integrated curriculum, comprised of the reflective study of the works of the best writers, artists, philosophers and scientists of Western history. The purpose of this education is not only to teach the student about his cultural heritage, but to actually engage him in the conversation of his ancestors, on the perennial human questions: Why do we exist? Is there absolute truth? What is goodness? Who is God? And so on. From poetry to politics to metaphysics, a Great Books education nourishes the imagination, steels and disciplines the mind, and morally orders the soul.

There are a few secular institutions, such as St. John’s College in Annapolis, which still follow this purpose and curriculum. In the case of Wyoming Catholic College, of course, the traditional array of great authors is taught in the context of revealed Church doctrine. The ultimate purpose of the College is to set its students on the path to Heaven. That’s quite a mission statement.

Why does a Great Books school have no majors—only a liberal arts degree?

In higher education today, specialization is rampant. Colleges typically only prepare students for a particular task in society—doctor, lawyer, technician, scientist, etc. Even the traditional humanities have become fragmented disciplines for specialists, tending towards the analytic. (An example: once in a public high school library I saw a poster advertising the school’s digital research tools. The poster displayed a rather bewildered Shakespeare sitting in front of a computer, wondering, “What are they saying about me now?” Right—because the study of Shakespeare is no longer about what Shakespeare has to say, but what specialized literary critics have to say about him.)

The purpose of a Great Books education is general education. These are the principles, the faculties, the insights, the common experience of all humanity. For we are human beings before we are workers of any kind. Catholic liberal education through the Great Books nourishes our uniting essence as free, rational creatures of God. If that doesn’t deserve (at least!) four years of study, I don’t know what does.

Isn’t it troubling that Great Books students cannot choose their own courses?

Flannery O’Connor, writing on how literature classes ought to be taught, once quipped, “And if the student finds that this [teaching method] is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable…His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.”

In this light, the typical university’s lure of “self-directed education” is revealed as ridiculous. What right have I, the as-yet-uneducated student, to determine the form and content of my own learning? Humility is required for education—a joyful openness and zeal to wrestle with ideas one never would have considered on one’s own.

There is another advantage to taking the same exact same classes and reading the exact same books as every other student in the college. Common knowledge and interest form culture; when the common interest is the joyful pursuit of wisdom through the Great Books, a community of learners is born who really care about truth, beauty, and the practice of virtuous life. It is this kind of people who quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) change the world for the better.

How does a Great Books school prepare the student for a stable career?

The primary purpose of a Great Books school is general education, not vocational training. That said, of course we all need to make a living, and to serve our fellow men. Technical training has a place. It is a good and useful one. But unless firmly fixed in a society with a strong moral order, even useful disciplines lose their ultimate meaning, opening doors to greed, exploitation, evil and suffering. We do need skillful men and women in our society, but first we need them to be good men and women.

I maintain that a liberal education not only teaches that necessary virtue, but it also lays the foundation for any and all vocational training a student may undergo after he graduates. Any career—medicine, business, education, the fine arts—requires for success a keen, disciplined mind, clear problem solving and communication skills, and a patient and persevering spirit. These qualities a Great Books school cultivates; it develops a person’s innate human potential, before sending him or her to a particular task in society.

In conclusion, while I do not yet have an exact career plan after college, in all honesty, I’m not worried. I was more worried about studying for an unsatisfying career and being miserable in it. I simply wanted to learn—to know things—to humanly flourish. I will be doing that at Wyoming Catholic College.

Introduction

He knew a path that wanted walking;

He knew a spring that wanted drinking;

A thought that wanted further thinking;

A love that wanted re-renewing.

~ Robert Frost, from “A Lone Striker”

In just two months, I will be striking out on my own. I will be leaving the Chicago area which I’ve called home for the entire eighteen years of my life. I’m shaking off these suburbs and skyscrapers. I’m headed westward, pioneer-style. Like the man in Frost’s poem above, I know a path that wants walking, a thought that wants thinking, a love that wants re-renewing.

In short, I’m going to Wyoming Catholic College.

I will be a freshman at Wyoming Catholic this August. But my journey to this new and unique Catholic school began long before that. Over the next couple of months, I’d like to share a few insights and reflections I’ve gained in my college search and preparation. It is my hope that this series will provide some timely thoughts on Catholic education, from the eyewitness viewpoint of a Catholic college student and aspiring writer. The Holy Spirit has truly led me to Wyoming Catholic. My only response can be to look back on the road so far, and praise Him.

The Calling

It was April 2013, the spring of my junior year of high school. The specter of college education had just begun to loom on my horizon, distant but still daunting—daunting, because, like many high school juniors and seniors, I had no clear idea what I wanted to do.

I had been given a quasi-classical, Catholic homeschool education since the age of four. What I had discovered over the years since then, was that I liked learning—especially the craft of words. I possessed a strong poetic streak and a penchant for weaving stories. I felt called to be an author.

My path should have been clear enough—go to a good liberal arts college, major in English or Creative Writing, land a job somewhere in the writing and publishing industry, and viola—my first novel would be right around the corner. Nevertheless, throughout high school I kept experiencing an odd, nagging feeling, that it wouldn’t be enough. As I fished through the growing pile of college brochures on my bedroom floor, nothing, not even the liberal arts schools, strongly attracted me. Something, among the ubiquitous boasts of the number of majors, the small class sizes, and the percentages of successful alumni—something was missing.

Meanwhile, during my junior year, I was enjoying my high school academics more than ever before. My parents, in the classical homeschool method, directed me towards the Great Books. I began to spend time with some of the greatest minds in Western history—Cervantes, Descartes, Milton, the American founding fathers, to name a very few. As I read their timeless works, I wrote summaries, asked questions, and reflected. I found that I loved finding the threads that connected these books to the absolutes of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. The wisdom of the Great Books—combined with the religious education I received from my parents—began nourishing not only my schoolwork, but my whole life and thought.

In April of 2013, a lightning-bolt of realization stunned me. I had to go to a Great Books college. There was no question about it. I needed to attend a school which primarily cultivated not what I would do for a job, but who I would be as a person. (Of course, the job aspect is important as well, but not one that I can address here in full. For now, let me put it this way: the discovery of the human essence comes first. Profession comes second.)

Enthused, I dove into my college search with a new vigor. Fortunately—considering the miniscule number of Great Books colleges in the country—it didn’t take me long to stumble across Wyoming Catholic College.

Wyoming Catholic is tiny. It’s less than ten years old. Enrollment, though growing, is currently fewer than 150 students. It does not yet have its own permanent campus, and it’s tucked in a little Western town called Lander at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. And yet, the day I explored their website, I became convinced that this was where I needed, wanted, desperately desired to go.

Wyoming Catholic possesses a unique, three-fold identity that might be outlined as Catholicism, Great Books, and Wilderness. The school’s mission statement attests:

“Wyoming Catholic College is a four-year college committed to offering a liberal arts education that steeps its students in the awesome beauty of our created, natural world and imbues them with the best that has been thought and said in Western civilization, including the moral and intellectual heritage of the Catholic Church. The College strives to promote a love of learning, an understanding of the natural order, and the quest for virtuous living so that its graduates will assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society.”

This college spoke to my heart and soul in a way no school ever had before. I had discovered the path that wanted walking, the love that wanted re-renewing. My grand adventure had begun.

Further Links

For an introduction to the classical education method, read this essay by historian and classical homeschool teacher Susan Wise Bauer.

For readers interested in learning more about Wyoming Catholic, visit their website at www.wyomingcatholiccollege.com. Their short film, “Everything in Excellence”, is an especially beautiful introduction to their mission and method.

Editor’s Notes: In the past few months we have seen the writing and editing talent of Mary Woods blossom. Now we are losing her to Wyoming. BUT all is not going to be missing. As a young lady with a deep faith she will be checking in with a monthly commentary about her adventures. Her faith and talent are striking out into the real world. Her faith will be tested and stretched, her talent molded. She will be “on an edge” more likely every now and then. Part of the curriculum is actually rock climbing! We are lucky to be sharing this adventure with her and send her along with prayers and love. Thank you Mary for your generosity. KC

Tag Archive for: Great Books

Faith on the Edge of a Cliff – Thoughts of a Wyoming Catholic College Student – Episode 2

Faith on the Edge of a Cliff: Thoughts of a Wyoming Catholic College Student – Episode 1

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