September 18, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 16Oakland, CA

St. Mary’s College students delve into classic texts

By Carrie McClish
Staff writer

When Hannah Gibson, a senior in the Integral Program at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, tells people that she is in a “great books program” she knows what will happen next.

“They nod with interest and invariably ask, with a sense of doom in their voice, what I plan to do with my major, as if I’ve wasted four years of college on reading dusty texts that won’t help with my stock options,” Gibson told The Voice. “However, when I rattle off some of the major texts we read, their eyes widen in amazement. It’s priceless, and what’s better, justified.”

Those eye-widening texts include authors recognized by a single name: the Odyssey and Iliad by Homer, plays by Greek playwrights Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

And for the record, Gibson is not a bit worried about her employment prospects.
Employers should consider themselves lucky to have an Integral graduate on their payrolls because they are well-read in every major subject – math, science, philosophy, literature and languages, she said. And more than that.

“We haven’t read third-generation interpretations on texts; we’ve read the original. Integral students think quickly, independently and don’t learn to default to generic and politically correct interpretation of texts.”

Now in its 50th year at St. Mary’s College, the Integral Program represents the heart of academics at the Moraga campus -- a dedication to the liberal arts that prepares its students for just about any profession.

“I’d say about a third of our people went into law. It is very good preparation for law and law schools,” said Denis Kelly, an associate professor in the Integral Program. Another third of students go into teaching and/or writing, he said, noting that Robert Haas, a former poet laureate of the U.S., is a graduate of the program.

The program is a “great preparation” for all kinds of different endeavors because it gives students the opportunity to teach themselves how to read and think more comprehensively, Kelly added.

While they can transfer out of the program, students must start the Integral Program in their freshman year because the program begins with the Greeks and over the next four years works chronologically to the modern world. In the process students travel through the history of Western thought.

Along the way students read Euclid’s geometry, learn Greek mathematics and receive a foundation in ancient science through the works of Archimedes. By their senior year, they are reading Albert Einstein. There is also hands-on learning. For example, students design instruments such as a plinth that Greeks used to map the movement of the stars and the planets.

The Integral Program includes a focus on music in which students first learn about Greek music and later modern music. Every year the sophomores demonstrates their knowledge of music in a concert in the campus chapel.

The Integral Program has been called a college within the college because it is a separate program, not an academic major or department. Rather it is a special community with its own curriculum, its own requirements and its own degree – a liberal arts in Integral Studies.

The program is open to students who are interested in reading and have an active and curious mind, Kelly said. Students “from all levels” of learning come to the program and some of them are better at some aspect of the program than another. “It certainly is not an honors program,” he said. “We see it as a way of learning and kind of a way of life.”

What Hannah Gibson loves is its balance between a leisurely class discussion and an intense work load. “No one is trying to develop some great interpretation of Plato that will forever alter the course of human history. No one is concerned about what will or won’t be on the final,” she said.

Instead Integral students are given the chance to develop ideas and to work them out in a discussion. “The ideas we produce are in no way new to the race of men or even necessarily great. The important part is that we have them.”

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