The Great Books Curriculum

The St John’s College Great Books Curriculum is one of the most interesting degrees I’ve seen. It’s a liberal arts education in which they read the classics and discuss them. The subjects they study include: philosophy, literature, political science, psychology, history, religion, economics, math, chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, music, language, and more.

Take a look at what they read during their Junior Year:

Cervantes: Don Quixote
Galileo: Two New Sciences
Hobbes: Leviathan
Descartes: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Milton: Paradise Lost
La Rochefoucauld: Maximes
La Fontaine: Fables
Pascal: Pensées
Huygens: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
Eliot: Middlemarch
Spinoza: Theologico-Political Treatise
Locke: Second Treatise of Government
Racine: Phèdre
Newton: Principia Mathematica
Leibniz: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay on Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
Hume: Treatise of Human Nature
Rousseau: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
Molière: Le Misanthrope
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Emma
Hawthorne: The Scarlett Letter
Dedekind: Essays on the Theory of Numbers
Articles of Confederation, Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America
Hamilton, Jay, and Madison: The Federalist
Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Wordsworth: The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
Essays by: Young, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli, Ørsted, Ampère, Faraday, Maxwell

No tests, no grades, none of that.

I love the idea behind this degree. Here, your professors are some of the greatest minds that ever lived. And reading the foundational texts in many subjects gives you the ability to think from first principles.

With all the flaws of the current education system, a future proof degree such as this one is a breath of fresh air.