The time has come for us to articulate some views
on the role computers might play in the St. John's community.
We are now so frequently asked by parents, friends, and the general
public what we are doing and plan to do, that we owe them and
ourselves at least the beginning of a response.
In this as in every issue we are facing, it is our
aim to be fully aware of what is going on in the wider world without
being easy victims to its trends and fashions, or to any imaginary
necessity. We never resign the duty to ask about every new possibility
what good it is in itself and what good it might be to our educational
purposes.
The use of computers on our campuses has two distinct
aspects. Under one fall the various computer services that are
ancillary to the Program, such as the automation of the offices
and the library, the accessibility of machines for word-processing,
hook-ups such as Internet for all who want them in the community,
as well as the use of computer technology in the design of various
publications, including our teaching manuals. We are proceeding
as quickly on all these fronts as our resources allow, and we
have a pretty good idea of the ranking of priorities. This activity
is under the guidance of a campus-wide Futures Committee chaired
by the Treasurer. A separate report of computer services now in
operation and soon expected to be available on the Annapolis campus
will be made.
The other aspect of computers is their role in the
teaching mission of St. John's. "Computers in the curriculum"
is a long-range and a weighty issue. That computers present a
challenge to our present program is not a mere phrase: the Program
of this college is drawn from the works of an established intellectual
tradition, works we judge to be of the highest intrinsic quality.
The question that now confronts us is whether and how the computer
is to be integrated with these works. It is, note, an external
challenge to a Program that just as it is offers enough vital
matter for many life-times. For us it is not a question of adding
but of replacing studies we have learned to value.
At least five uses through which the computer might
affect our sort of education are imaginable:
1. The use of the computer to access enormous quantities
of widely dispersed information is probably the one most often
mentioned with respect to electronic learning.
Our Program, which does not pretend to teach every
useful intellectual skill, is specifically focussed on the study
of primary works approached through the basic arts of inquiry.
We do not train our students in the special techniques of original
research, an intellectual endeavor distinct from critical inquiry.
In our desire that students should confront texts directly we
have made a carefully thought-out commitment to the avoidance
of background information and secondary literature. The texts
themselves are not books of information but of interpretation.
This Program is fundamentally reflective rather than research-oriented,
on the hypothesis that well-grounded thoughtfulness is the best
antecedent to independent discovery.
The computer as a channel of information is therefore
unlikely soon to have a formal role in the Program. We can be
certain that our students, who are nothing if not intellectually
independent, will play with its informational possibilities. But
it is unlikely that these will have a large role in helping students
to read as we would like them to read: with full concentration
on the text before them. For easy access to information is, of
anything, highly dispersive -- by a click it wafts the user away
from the given text into sometimes illuminating but often distracting
trivia, for example, into a pictorial biography of the author.
We have every faith that our computer-canny students
will make discreet informational use of their computers without
our formal intervention.
2. A growing number of alumni already communicate
with each other on their own bulletin board, and the students
on our two campuses are in touch by e-mail. At some point questions
concerning long-distance seminars will surely arise: Are they
a contradiction in terms or a viable extension of the St. John's
seminar? Can electronic communication be counted as a form of
human conversation and if so, what understandings ought to govern
it?
Since this college considers itself a formal
conversational community, a consideration of these questions will
become necessary, not because they demand a curricular response,
but because our larger universe of discourse will be affected.
3. As really sophisticated soft-ware for drill in
the elements of Greek, French, algebra, and perhaps the calculus
is developed -- possibly even from within the college -- we will
have to consider whether machine-assisted learning might not free
class time for the kind of reflective discussion that we wish
to take place there. If students could both study their elementary
forms and have their study monitored by machines, the consistent
learning discipline that tutors find it so hard to maintain in
these rote aspects of the Program might be substantially improved.
Similarly our study of mathematics and science might
be helped by the use of the moving graphics and all the sorts
of visualizations that are possible on the computer.
There is strong and thoughtful resistance to these
learning aids from members of the faculty who think that even
the elements of language learning can be informed with intellectual
interest in the common classroom experience, which experience
would be lost in the rigidity and isolation of programmed learning.
Similarly they judge that graphic representations done by hand
bring home more intimately the hypotheses that govern their generation.
We will have to think this out, and our decisions might have a
considerable -- though by no means a drastic -- effect on the
tutorials and laboratories.
4. The computer is itself the physical embodiment
of a logic. The logic component of our language curriculum could
do with rethinking. It could be more coherent and also more progressive
in the sense of bringing us further into modernity. We might perhaps
include some foundational papers on logic machines and computational
(binary) logic, artificial intelligence, information theory, or
computer languages. Again this is a possibility we must think
through, probably by means of a study group charged with choosing
texts and involving the faculty at large. Practical curricular
decisions will then follow.
5. The most substantial part the computer might be
imagined to play in the Program is as an essential tool
of discovery. There is a new type of theory which is dependent
on fast computation not as a convenience but as a constituent
part of theory-making. The study of non-linear systems, usually
called chaos theory, has captured the public imagination, and
here for once we would do well to be infected with the enthusiasm.
Chaos theory raises anew and with vivid accessibility many of
the questions we have broached with our students from the freshman
year: What is the relation of mathematical to physical theory?
What is the relation of theory to the phenomena? What characterizes
a new discovery? What is causality? What is the relation of determinism
to predictability? What is intellectual beauty?
Within the next decade we will undoubtedly consider
bringing the computer into the mathematics-laboratory part of
the program in some such substantial capacity. There will be major
decisions for us to make: whether to devote resources now to developing
the faculty's competence in this direction; whether we want soon
to dismember our present successful senior laboratory (the most
likely place for such studies); what financial investment we could
afford; and above all, whether the intrinsic interest of these
theories warrants their choice over other contemporary physical
or biological papers we might read with our students.
Whatever we decide about the integration of computers
into the curriculum we must keep in mind and would like our friends
to remember this: St. John's intends to remain true to its mission
of liberal learning. It therefore does not pretend to train its
students in the many operational skills necessary to contemporary
life. Liberal learning is learning done for its own sake, and
so it requires subjects and texts that have great independent
depth and beauty. It is an incidental though natural consequence
that our alumni, who have learned to love learning, do very well
in the world.
Miss Brann requests that responses be sent to her via snail mail: Eva T. H. Brann, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404.