The College's program of Catholic liberal education is unique
in American higher education.
Fundamental in the Catholic intellectual tradition is the
conviction that learning means discovering and growing in
the truth about reality. It is the truth that sets men
free and nothing else. Since truth concerns both natural
and supernatural matters, the College's  program
has both natural and divine wisdom as its ultimate objectives.
There are no textbooks. The prescribed, four-year
interdisciplinary course of studies is based on the original
works of the best, most influential authors, poets, scientists,
mathematicians, philosophers, and theologians of Western civilization.
In every classroom, the primary teachers are the authors of
the "Great Books" from Aristotle, Homer and Euclid
to St. Thomas Aquinas, T. S. Eliot and Albert Einstein.
 There
are no lectures. Teaching and learning demand a meeting
of the minds. The course is, therefore, essentially a sustained
conversation in tutorials, seminars, and laboratories guided
by tutors who assist students in the work of reading, analyzing,
and evaluating the great works which are central in the collected
wisdom of Civilization. Classes are Socratic in method and
do not exceed twenty students. Every student has daily practice
in the arts of language, grammar, and rhetoric; in reading
and critical analysis of texts; in mathematical demonstration;
in laboratory investigation.
There are no majors, no minors, no electives, no specializations.
The arts and sciences which comprise the curriculum are organized
into a comprehensive whole. The College aims at providing
its students with a thorough grounding in the arts of thinking
and a broad and integrated vision of the whole of life and
learning.
|
