FOR RELEASE: April 1, 1999
CONTACT: Barbara Goyette - Annapolis - 410-626-2539 ([email protected])
or Laura Mulry - Santa Fe - 505-984-6104 ([email protected])
Oral Examinations Test St. John's Students' Mettle
Spring means exam time at colleges and universities across the country, but at St. John's College (Annapolis, Md., and Santa Fe, N.M.) students do not have to sit through hours filling in blue books for end-of-semester tests. However, seniors do have to face an intimidating public oral examination during which they must defend a long original essay they have written.
At St. John's, all classes are discussion format in which readings from the "great books" are discussed; math problems from Euclid to Einstein are demonstrated; passages, plays, and poems in French and Ancient Greek are translated; and breakthrough laboratory experiments by the important scientists from Archimedes to Einstein are re-created. (A full description of the program, including reading lists, can be found at www.sjca.edu). The type of exams held at other colleges and universities are not the best method of assessing a St. John's student's comprehension of the work that has been done. There are no written exams and very few quizzes.
Instead, exams during the students' careers are oral, and the most important exam is the senior oral, which occurs in the spring of senior year. The subject of the exam is a major paper the student has written. Students must write a satisfactory paper and pass the exam to graduate. The exam is a public event--with fellow students, faculty members, even parents attending. The student and the three faculty members examining him/her all wear academic gowns.
Seniors are given four weeks off from class to write their essays. Each student works with an advisor, a member of the faculty with a particular interest or expertise in the subject the student has chosen. The papers need to show original analysis and thought; secondary sources are used very sparingly. Essay topics can involve any aspect of the St. John's program, from literature to philosophy to mathematics. Some students focus on a particular book in the program, while others attempt to integrate several works into a thesis. Essays can range from 20 to 50 pages, although some have been much longer.
After the essays are submitted to the dean, a committee of three faculty members is assigned to each one, according to subject matter. If the committee accepts the essay, the oral is scheduled.
The oral lasts one hour. In the best cases, the exam develops into a conversation that goes on to further exploration of the ideas presented in the essay. Sometimes the faculty members will address questions to one another, leaving the student temporarily out of the line of fire. The tradition of oral exams at St. John's dates to 1937, when the interdisciplinary great books curriculum was adopted. It probably is derived from practices at European universities that date back several centuries.
Students receive a letter grade on the essay and a pass or fail mark on the exam.
Some senior essay titles this year: Francis Bacon's Goal for Science and Society Finding the Myth-Maker in Plato's "Timaeus" Bound for Freedom: The Story of Hegel's Self-Consciousness Finding Direction Out: An Exploration of the Art of the Theater in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" The Non-Rational Foundations of Modern Science and Descartes' Metaphysics - Moral Director or Truth Revealed? The Listener's Participation in the Musical Experience Socratism and the Art of Dying: The Problem of Science in "The Birth of Tragedy" An Interplay of Creative Destruction (An Investigation into Nietzsche's Conception of Absolute Truth) The Consequences of Morality or, What it Means to be Human in "The Iliad" Praising Poetry: Appreciating Gerard Manly Hopkins' "As Kingfishers..." The Ardently Willing Soul: An Examination of the Heroine in George Eliot's "Middlemarch" Is Morality Natural?
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