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SJC has a long history stretching back to 1784, when it was founded as a college. In 1937, Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan implemented the “New Program,” also referred to as the “Great Books” program. As historian Donald Asher states, SJC adopted the Great Books program, which had its provenance at the University of Chicago, for financial reasons: during the Great Depressions, SJC nearly went bankrupt. Barr and Buchanan’s hope was that a distinctively idiosyncratic program would attract more students, and therefore save SJC from financial ruin. It was thus financial desperation rather than academic inspiration that seems to have motivated the SJC program.
Since the arguments articulated on this website target SJC’s academic program, I must be clear about exactly what SJC’s program is. Indeed, I have received an overwhelming number of emails asking me—often quite angrily—why I don’t think Aristotle (or the Bible, Kant, etc.) should be read, what I dislike about liberal education, and so on. As my biography states, though, I am first and foremost a philosopher, and I hold liberal education in the highest esteem. My quarrel is not with liberal education per se, but rather with SJC’s peculiar and problematic interpretation of what liberal education ought to be.
This section analyzes and critiques four distinct features of the SJC program: (1) non-didacticism, (2) seminars rather than lectures, (3) anti-secondary sources and anti-technical terminology stance, and (4) anti-specialization stance.
Feature 1, Non-Didacticism:
SJC champions a non-didactic approach to teaching. Some readers may immediately note the oxymoronicity of ‘non-didactic teaching’, since the term ‘didactic’, deriving from the Greek ‘didaktikós’, means to teach, and therefore ‘non-didactic teaching’ means non-teaching teaching. This conclusion is quite right, in fact: although one naturally assumes that the primary function of academic institutions is to teach, as the accreditation agencies on the Miscellaneous page agree, SJC tutors do not in fact actively instruct their students. Instead, through "provocative silence" (to quote the SJC website), SJC tutors passively guide them through the labyrinthine “Great Books." This methodology of instruction, which is absolutely not "consistent with current research" (see the Miscellaneous page for more), is reflected in SJC’s terminological switch of ‘tutor’ for ‘professor’. The former has a didactic role, while the latter does not.
The reasons for SJC’s passive, non-didactic approach are both theoretical and practical in nature. On the theoretical side, SJC holds the normative position that institutions ought not to “pontificate” (Barr’s term) to students; I address the problems of this view below. On the practical side, the majority of SJC tutors couldn’t, even if they wanted to, teach the “Great Books.” This is because of two combined reasons: (i) the SJC faculty together exhibit a broad diversity of academic and intellectual backgrounds, and (ii) SJC tutors are required to teach in rotation every course that SJC offers.
A quick glance over the SJC faculty webpage reveals that some SJC tutors hold degrees in Ancient History, some in Neurology, others in Political Science, Biology, and Physics. While this range of academic backgrounds may sound prima facie impressive, on the flip side it means that the majority of SJC tutors have no academic training in philosophy whatsoever. (Also don’t forget that the faculty at any university will be just as eclectic, if not more so—with its myriad academic departments, etc.) Indeed, while I was a SJC student, my Greek tutor admitted in private that the first time he read the canonical works was after SJC hired him.
This being said, recall that SJC boasts its degree is equivalent to “two substantial majors,” one of which is Philosophy (the other History of Mathematics and Science; see below), as well as two minors. Thus, SJC is analogous to the institution that gives Art degrees without instruction from trained, professional artists, or Physics degrees without physicists. It is patent in these cases that such an institution would not gain accreditation. Yet, inexplicably, SJC manages to gain accreditation, giving degrees in Philosophy without any trained, professional philosophers. This is clearly absurd, paradoxical, and unacceptable from an accredited institution.
Furthermore, SJC is one of the only academic institutions in the U.S. that does not require its faculty to publish original research in peer-reviewed journals. Consequently, (a) SJC tutors are (notoriously) inconversant with contemporary philosophical trends, and (b) SJC makes virtually no contribution to contemporary philosophical thought. In fact, not a single notable philosopher is associated with SJC (with the exception, I suppose, of the extremely controversial Leo Strauss). Put differently, every single notable philosophy—e.g., contemporaries such as Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Thomas Kuhn, Gilbert Ryle, and so on—is associated with traditional academic institutions.
This applies not just to contemporary philosophers, but historical philosophers as well: as far as I know, not one of the canonical philosophers received an education like the one SJC provides. Some, of course, spend their formative years reading the Western philosophic canon—John Stuart Mill, for example, read Plato at age 3; but even he was actively taught by Jeremy Bentham. Thus, the capital-‘g’ “Great” philosophers of the Western intellectual tradition—paragons of the kind of philosophical, self-examining, introspective individual that SJC strives to produce—did not themselves receive a SJC-like education. It therefore seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that if one wants to emulate these philosophers, one ought to get a traditional education—an education in which experts teach.
Let us return briefly to the issue of academic expertise. I accept as an uncontroversial truism that when one wants to know about any subject X, one seeks out an expert on X. This is both a descriptive and normative statement (i.e., one about what is and what ought to be). It is after all commonsense to visit an oncologist to diagnose a possibly cancerous growth rather than, say, a plumber. Even the accreditation agencies that have accredited SJC agree. (See the Miscellaneous page for details.)
Similarly, if a student wants to know about philosophy (or oncology, or whatever), he or she ought to seek out a professional philosopher (or oncologist), someone whose expertise is that subject. I cannot stress enough that while SJC graduates receive a degree in Philosophy, SJC has almost no experts in philosophy. Again, if this were any other college (such as a school of oncology), the institution would immediately lose its academic accreditation, as the Miscellaneous page makes clear. Indeed, courses at medical schools are taught by professors with M.D.s or Ph.D.s in medicine and surrounding fields, rather than “tutors” with degrees in other, unrelated fields of study—we should all be very happy about this!
But Stringfellow Barr, co-founder of SJC, comments that professors at traditional academic institutions “pontificate,” and that because pontification is bad, professors are bad, and therefore ought to be replaced by tutors—or so the syllogism goes. As my parenthetical several paragraphs above mentions, the term ‘pontificate’ in this context is ambiguous. To disambiguate one must specify precisely what the professor is being pontifical about. To do this, I introduce the following distinction between facts and opinions: simply put, facts are truths, and opinions are personal feelings about the significance (etc.) of those truths.
This is not a controversial distinction. In fact, logicians have recognized it for some time, although the their terms are not quite the same: "beliefs" take the place of "facts," and "attitudes" take the place of "opinions." The point is that whether or not the professor ought to be blamed for pontificating depends entirely on the content of the pontification: if the professor asserts such-and-such an opinion and dogmatically refuses to allow his or her students to consider any other point of view, then the professor surely ought to be censured. Such behavior is intellectually dishonest, and has no place in academia. But if the professor asserts such-and-such a fact and the student dogmatically refuses to accept it, then surely the student ought to be censured.
Thus, Barr fails to note an essential ambiguity in his comment, and this leads to tremendous confusion about the role of professors at traditional universities. As I state in the following sections, it is absolutely vital for the life of academia that beginning students—up until graduate school, in most cases—be (i) told the facts by knowledgeable professors (and then required to regurgitate them on tests), and (ii) be encouraged to think for themselves on matters of opinion (and then required to articulate their thoughts in term papers). At SJC, neither of these occurs—the arguments in the following sections explicate why.
Feature 2, Seminars Rather Than Lectures:
The second important feature of the SJC program is that classes are seminar (rather than lecture) based. This is consistent with SJC’s non-didactic approach, since seminar discussions involve student-student dialogue (a discussion), with little “interference” from tutors, rather than professor-student monologue (a lecture). I should add that tutors often don’t “interfere” in seminars even when students have facts about the subject of discussion wrong.
Again, this is partly because most tutors have no formal academic training in philosophy whatsoever, and therefore often fail to recognize false notions that students unknowingly accept. This is, of course, precisely where experts at traditional universities enter the picture: when a student says, for example, that Kant awoke Hume from his dogmatic slumber (the exact opposite was the case), professors are there to recognize the falsity and correct the student. Without such a correction, the student would persist in believing false notion about the intellectual relationship between Hume and Kant.
Let me begin this section with an important preliminary note about the function or role of the “Great Books” in SJC’s curriculum. In contrast to traditional institutions, the assigned texts at SJC are mere means to an end, rather than the end of scholarship themselves. The end, according to SJC’s website, is to “free men and women from the tyrannies of unexamined opinions and inherited prejudices.” (A rather ironic statement given this website, theunexaminedcurriculum.com!)
This is precisely why SJC—over four years of study, culminating in two substantial majors and two minors, and in violation of standard accreditation requirements (see the Miscellaneous page for details)—administers no tests, and therefore requires its students to memorize absolutely nothing. (The one exception might be Euclid’s and Newton's theorems, a few of which must be memorized over the course of the semester and presented in class.) The “Great Books” merely provide the occasion for exercising the mental muscle, for philosophy neophytes to debate their uninformed opinions of texts for two hours twice a week.
At traditional academic institutions, on the other hand, students are not only required to exercise the mental muscle by writing >20 page term papers for each class (twice as long as the one SJC term paper due each semester), as well as to discuss issues in class with other students and the professor, but also to internalize a great deal of the material covered. The former, I will say, corresponds to the cogitative aspect of traditional liberal education, and the latter to the regurgitative aspect . SJC espouses the exclusivist position that emphasizes only cogitation; regurgitation is completely supererogatory at SJC—even considered something to avoid by many tutors. Most educators would agree, though, that regurgitation constrains, in the relevant sense, cogitation. In other words, if I don’t know much about X, then I can’t think deeply about X. Or more concretely, if I think that Kant is the predecessor of Hume, I won't be able to entertain coherent thoughts about their important relationship.
This gets us back to the distinction between facts and opinions. It seems completely uncontroversial (although SJC would disagree) that at an absolute minimum, students ought to be able to regurgitate the basic facts of their discipline. For example, philosophy students ought to be able to answer questions such as: What is empiricism? Was Hume a rationalist? Was Plato Aristotle’s student or vice versa? What is theodicy? What is a tautology? What is the analytic-synthetic distinction? What does it mean to "appeal to authority"? and so on. These questions were not selected at random. They come from actual conversations I’ve had with SJC students and graduates—students with a "substantial major" in Philosophy, who should have known the answer to at least most of these introductory-level Philosophy course test questions.
These basic philosophical concepts constitute what essentialist philosophies of education call a “toolbox of knowledge.” The idea, which maps directly onto the regurgitation-cogitation introduced distinction above, is that one uses the acquired intellectual tools in this toolbox to construct the edifice of personal opinion, and therefore without such tools the act of constructing is impossible. In other words, if one’s opinion is to be informed (rather than uninformed), one needs this toolbox of knowledge. At SJC, because of the non-didactic approach and seminar based classes, students—many of whom are recent high school graduates—form opinions about major philosophical works without any context (see below), without any instruction from tutors, and without any prior general knowledge of philosophy.
Students’ opinions are, therefore, inevitably uninformed; and indeed I have copious anecdotal evidence to support this. The inability of SJC graduates to answer the basic, introductory-level questions two paragraphs above is a start. One can also read excerpts of seminars on the SJC website that show how desultory, unfocused, and often times just plain incoherent seminar discussions. (That seminar discussion is incoherent is not the students’ fault, of course. It is, rather, the SJC program's fault for not providing the sort of academic environment that beginning students need.)
For example, one SJC student says, in seminar: “It is really valuable to be able to understand that gravity is not simply a fact that exists, but is somebody’s idea.” Another student declares, again in seminar: “There are some things that I just can’t explain rationally, like certain feelings or responses, like falling in love.” Yet another states, in a special seminar about SJC: “I feel that it’s not just that this school makes me want to inquire into lofty topics, but it makes me want to hold onto the things, like virtue, that I know I can’t every truly know, but that I still want to pursue. So it’s not just knowledge that the school gives us, but a means for working out our own beliefs about things. Also, to let us know that you can’t just hold onto ideas, you need to grasp onto them. If I turn my back on them they will flee. So I have to always actively be holding onto my beliefs.”
Could this sound more like casual book club palaver? The only difference between a book club and SJC is that the former does not get academic accreditation. SJC students are, no doubt, intelligent and curious minds searching for answers to deep philosophical questions. But without instruction, without intellectual discipline, they simply cannot formulate coherent answers to those questions. Again, it is no wonder that not a single notable philosopher has come out of the SJC program; nor is a single notable philosopher affiliated with SJC.
Allow me to summarize the primary thrust of my argument so far: SJC is a great place to read primary texts and discuss them with peers, to meet other eager minds with whom to debate abstruse philosophical issues, and so on. Despite these facts, SJC just ought not to be accredited, and for the very same reasons that book clubs—which might even read the Western philosophic canon, as Socrates Cafe sometimes does—ought not to be, and aren't, accredited. In other words, SJC is just a book club with accreditation—and this is a problem!
Moving on, part of being a real academic institution, of course, is giving out grades. But without tests, how does the SJC faculty evaluate academic performance and assign letter grades to students (when they graduate or transfer)? To begin, because SJC administers no tests, its faculty have no objective method for establishing student achievement as good or bad. Instead, grades are based entirely on subjective assessments of (i) students’ contributions to seminar discussions, (ii) the few short papers that they must write each year, and (iii) a general feeling about the student. This means, first of all, that if one falls into disfavor with a SJC tutor, the tutor has the academic (although certainly not the ethical) prerogative to mark that student down grade-wise. Second of all, it fails to satisfy the Middle States Commission on Higher Education requirement #20, viz., that "the institution [must engage] in systematic evaluation of student achievement." Subjective grading, i.e., grading with no tests whatsoever, clearly does not count as "systematic."
Indeed, this is precisely what happened to me while I was at SJC: I had a Laboratory class with Ms. Kronsberg, an alumnus of SJC who started tutoring just four years after graduating without any higher degree (M.A., M.S., Ph.D.). In other words, Ms. Kronsberg became a SJC tutor with only her B.A. from SJC. (See the Miscellaneous Stuff page for more.) Although this would be extremely anomalous—actually, unheard of—at traditional institutions, it is not particularly unusual at SJC. Indeed, recall that an inordinate 40% of SJC tutors are alumni of the institution. All one needs academically and intellectually, in fact, to serve as a SJC tutor, given the passive, non-didactic role tutors have in seminars, is a SJC education! Thus, SJC sustains itself as an incestuously self-perpetuating institution.
My story continues: since Ms. Kronsberg had only a SJC education, she (quite understandably) knew nothing about the Philosophy of Science—in particular the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn. Often, though, in Lab Ms. Kronsberg would assert something about his philosophy that was—as a matter of fact—erroneous. As a sedulous autodidact prior to matriculation at SJC, I had read Kuhn’s Structures, and thus being somewhat conversant with Kuhn’s philosophy felt compelled to kindly suggest what Kuhn (and others) really did say. It seemed to me the intellectually honest thing to do. To be clear, I am talking about matters of fact, not opinion: for example, Ms. Kronsberg once attributed to Kuhn the quote: “An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.” As a matter of historical record, though, these are the words of Max Plank.
My story ends with Ms. Kronsberg giving me, on my permanent academic record, a “D” for Lab. This is particularly ironic—and sad, frustrating, etc.—because science and the philosophy of science are now my areas of academic expertise: I am earning a Masters degree in Neuroscience, and while at the University of Maryland wrote an Honors thesis on the philosophy of science issues of explanation and causation. I also was awarded the Schlaretzki Prize awarded for being the “most outstanding student" in the Philosophy Department—due in part to my Honors thesis. (See the Biography page for details.) I am not vaunting, of course; I just want to say that the “D” Ms. Kronsberg gave me was entirely undeserved—her decision to tarnish my permanent record because of her mistakes in class was unfair and unethical, especially since I was the only student to read all the assigned texts that semester!
The ultimate point is this: the SJC program is designed such that tutors have latitude to assign whatever grades they want to students, i.e., the decision to give one an “A” or “F” is entirely subjective. Again, this strongly contrasts with traditional institutions, which have at least some objective and fair basis for assigning grades.
Before concluding this section, I should clarify the comments of “(i)” several paragraphs above, namely that grades are based in part on students' contribution to seminar discussion. The word ‘contribution’ here is unclear, and ought to be disambiguated. As I was told on separate occasions by two seminar tutors, the extent of one’s contribution to class discussions is dependent on the quantity, rather than quality of comments. Two points about this: first of all, I am tend to be rather taciturn, especially in large groups. Consequently, I (and other quiet students) had an immediate disadvantage at SJC. Second, I had always made an attempt to listen more than I talk—to understand rather than be understood. My self-imposed rule was therefore to speak when I’ve got something to say, otherwise to listen.
I attempted to follow this rule at SJC, and it cost me—I was one of the few students to receive a “B” in seminar. My “Febby” friend, in contrast, who was not so taciturn as I, received an “A"—and he did this without reading a single assigned text! (I know what grade he received because he transferred out of SJC the same time I did and we've kept in touch. And I know that he didn’t read a single text because he very often joked about it in private.) How did he do so well? Simple, he spoke in class: every seminar he made a point of talking at least five or six times. And he could do this because: (a) seminar discussions are not particularly coherent to begin with, and (b) one can make inferences about the subject of discussion just by listening. My friend's complete ignorance about the assigned readings was consequently imperceptible to other students and the tutors! Because of the quantity of his “contributions,” he received an “A."
I can't express how upsetting this was, especially given the fact that I spend days reading every single assigned text both semesters that I was at SJC. An institution that permits this sort of trickery without any means of defending against ought not to be accredited.
Feature 3, Anti-Secondary Sources and Anti-Technical Terminology Stance:
SJC completely eschews (1) secondary sources and (2) technical terminology. That is to say, with respect to the former, students are strictly forbidden to read secondary sources; and with respect to the latter, it follows directly from the fact that (i) most SJC tutors have no formal academic background in philosophy whatsoever, and (ii) secondary sources are forbidden, that students are not taught the technical terminology of philosophy (or any other academic discipline).
SJC’s anti-secondary source view is nicely summed up by tutor Joe Sachs in an essay published in The Moon (a SJC student publication). Sachs writes that secondary sources stand “between [the reader] and [his or her] own encounter with the primary text.” Worse, Sachs warns that secondary sources “squash the very activity [students] need to engage in if [they’re] going to learn anything.” In sum, learning results from reading primary texts, and secondary sources interfere with this process.
First of all, the distinction between primary and secondary sources, upon which Sachs predicates his entire argument, is extremely dubious. (See the How Does Post-Modernism Fit In With The SJC Program? page for more.) So what is this putative distinction based on? Generally speaking, primary texts are considered to be those that provide “direct, unmediated information about the object of study.” In contrast, secondary sources included exegeses, interpretations, commentaries, and so on, about other works. For example, say that text A discusses the meaning of life, while text B discusses text A’s discussion of the meaning of life. The former would be primary, and the latter secondary.
But note that text A is nevertheless mediating one’s encounter with the issue itself—in this case the meaning of life. Furthermore, one rarely find a text B that discusses text A without putting forth some (or maybe a lot) of its own views on the matter, thereby assuming a primary text-like posture. Clearly, Sachs has not thought deeply about this issue of primary and secondary sources.
If SJC opposes mediation, which Sachs proceeds to argue in his essay, then it should also oppose reading any and every text, be it primary or secondary. Instead, students should just think about the issues, without Plato, Aristotle, and the others whispering in their ears, telling them what to believe, i.e., without mediating between the questioner and the question. Furthermore, students should refrain from discussing such issues with other students or tutors, whose opinions might corrupt those of their the students. This, of course, is precisely what (one particular category of) secondary sources do, namely put forth opinions, interpretations, and so on. The only relevant difference is that students exchange opinions via oral communication, while books exchange them via written communication. There is, therefore, no fundamental difference between these two modes of communicative exchange. It follows from this that if one mode is forbidden, the other ought to be forbidden as well. Sachs view, when taken to its logical conclusion, thus leads to a sort of intellectual solipsism, in which curious minds encounter the issues themselves without the corrupting influences of any outside agent or force whatsoever. This conclusion is one of many paradoxes embedded in the SJC educational philosophy.
Turning to the more practical side of things, eschewing secondary sources leaves students completely unfamiliar with (i) the oceanic and extremely rich scholarship that has accumulated around the "Great Books," as well as (ii) the all-important process of citing secondary sources in academic papers. Knowing about neither is extremely deleterious for the student. In addition, there is the issue of historical and authorial context, which well established work in hermeneutics states is absolutely essential for an understanding of historical works. For example, knowing that Marx was hugely influenced by Hegel’s philosophy of history and metaphysics (which Marx, a materialist, later rejected) greatly elucidates Marx’s dialectical materialism. One might even say a deep understanding of Marx is impossible with knowledge of Hegel. SJC, in rebellion against the educational norms of every other academic institution in the U.S., suspends the “Great Books” in a total contextual vacuum—completely eviscerating them from the intellectual and historical milieus in which they were written.
At this point, I wish to spend no more time on the subject of secondary sources. It seems to me—and every single educator with whom I've discussed this—completely uncontroversial that secondary texts are an absolutely vital source of knowledge about target texts, as well as the intellectual and historical milieus in which those texts written. In addition, as I mention above, secondary texts very often put forth their own ideas and perspectives on issues, therefore blurring the primary-secondary source distinction that Sacs uncritically accepts. In conclusion, then, it is a very serious flaw of the SJC program that secondary sources are forbidden—that primary texts cannot be read in conjunction with secondary sources, at they are in traditional academic programs.
Just as problematic as forbidding secondary sources is SJC’s complete eschewal of technical terminology. To begin, all well-developed domains of human inquiry have their own phraseology, i.e., a specialized language of jargon terms that serve to facilitate theoretical discussion. Part of learning a subject is internalizing that subject's phraseology.
The reason for SJC’s rejection of such a specialized language is twofold: on the theoretical side, SJC resists the inexorable push toward academic specialization (see below). Indeed, this was one of Barr and Buchanan’s ideas behind "The New Program," and why SJC has no academic departments. On the practical side, though, SJC eschews technical terminology because very few SJC tutors have any formal academic training in philosophy whatsoever. Thus, SJC tutors just don't speak the specialized language to begin with.
A serious consequence of this fact is that, just as SJC students graduate without knowledge of basic philosophical concepts (the essentialist's “toolbox” mentioned above), they also graduate without knowledge of the basic technical terms that refer to those concepts. (For examples, such as those given above, see the SJC Student Exchanges and Correspondences page. )
If a liberal education is to do only one thing, it should be to teach philosophy students the basic terms and concepts of the field. Such basic knowledge is an absolute prerequisite for one to make a contribution to contemporary philosophical thought, as well as pursue a career as a professional philosopher. Again, it is not surprising that not a single notable contemporary philosopher has come out of SJC. This is yet another reason why SJC ought not to be accredited.
Feature 4, Anti-Specialization Stance:
As I mention above, "The New Program" was inspired in part by a Barr and Buchanan's repugnance towards academic specialization. Specialization (in the present context) is the phenomenon whereby individuals dedicate their scholarly lives to a single special domain of inquiry, rather than a broad general one. As the apothegm goes, "The specialist knows a lot about a little, rather than a little about a lot." But what's wrong with this?
Many philosophers of education see specialization as a necessary consequence of intellectual inquiry into the world around us. It turns out (although it didn’t necessarily have to) that the universe is extraordinarily complex. Given this fact, the specialist knows a lot about a little because (i) the best way to make a contribution to the enterprise of human understanding is to know, at minimum, one subject very well, and (ii) time constrains the possibilities of how much one can know. In other words, because of our "finitary predicament" (to borrow a phrase from Christopher Cherniak), there is an inverse relation between the breadth and depth of knowledge that we can acquire. In other words, we are pulled toward dilettantism with breadth of knowledge on the one hand, and expertise with depth of knowledge on the other. (There are, of course, cases of polymathic individuals who possess both breadth and depth. But such cases are very rare.)
It is therefore partly because the quest to understand the universe in which we live is a cooperative enterprise that specialization turns out to be the best way to make a contribution. Suffice it to say that, in the vast ocean of academia, the tiny island of SJC stands alone in discouraging specialization; nearly every other academic institution embraces it, and for very good reasons.
Thus, while SJC's students get the breadth of (a large portion of) the Western philosophic canon—from the pre-Socratics circa 600-450 B.C.E. to Bertrand Russell in the early twentieth century—they do not get the depth knowing any one of the canonical philosophers well. This is, as the above sections mention, in part because memorization of the readings is entirely supererogatory, since SJC does not administer any tests; furthermore, it is because SJC does not required its students to know basic philosophical concepts or their corresponding technical terms. But it is also because there is simply no time to read the Western philosophic canon in four years and gain anything more than a superficial knowledge of the canonical philosophers. (Incidentally, this is yet another reason why secondary texts are invaluable resources for students.) There is an ineluctable trade-off, and SJC opts for dilettantism over expertise.
Indeed, since each semester's seminar is about a different set of Western philosophers, the entire four years at SJC consists of nothing more than introductory courses. Let us call this the "superficialism" of the SJC curriculum.