Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series | "Our Problem with the Problem with Technology"

Speaker: Dan Harrell, St. John's College Tutor

One can envision a St. John’s College where we study technology as explicitly and seriously as we study mathematics or laboratory science, while also refusing to adopt innovations in technology in the same way we have renounced educational innovations such as electives and majors. Imagine a St. John's, for example, where all college business is still done on paper — circa 1937, or even 1997 — while there is nonetheless a required semester-long class on computation. The actual St. John’s College, by contrast, has chosen the opposite path. There is no such study of technology even while the college has become dependent on its use, and mostly nods at the use of it by students.

One way to put the question of my lecture is therefore this: Which college — the St. John’s of my imagination or the actual thing — is the better example of what liberal education is?