By JJ Bowman
Associate Editor
“Oedipus is traveling to Thebes at 2.81 kilometers per hour. King Laius left for Thebes from the same spot 18 hours before, and he is traveling at .47 kph. Assuming Thebes is 52 kilometers from their starting point, how far will Oedipus be from Thebes before he fulfills the awful prophesy of Tiresias and kills his own father?”
Welcome to the new Great Books Colloquium, where you can receive credit for Math 102. According to the new handbook, freshmen who enroll in the four-semester course will be exempt from having to take first-year seminar, English 101, literature, Religion 301 and they may choose to skip out of one of seven other classes, including Math 102 and Speech 180.
Math 102? Speech 180?
At first, it seems ludicrous to suggest that Great Books can substitute for Math 102. After all, the only math I completed during the colloquium came when I successfully figured out that 90 pages of Buber plus 300 pages of Maya Angelou equals a long Sunday evening and a cruel Dr. Gose. Furthermore, just because we read about the Greek polis does not mean Great Books students could persuade in Agoura.
Defending the Math replacement theorem (albeit coolly), Great Books professor Dr. Don Thompson mentioned that students will study Descartes, Euclid and Darwin, who at least provide a foundation in the scientific method.
The 2003-2004 academic catalog states, “The underlying theme is that mathematics is a vibrant, evolutionary discipline.” Obviously, this is a survey course, and reading the original works of scientific geniuses just may compensate for the knowledge not learned in the Math 102 classroom. For a Great Books scholar uninterested in taking a math course — and therefore likely to opt out of Math 102 — just reading their works would probably be more valuable to them than taking tests on forgettable equations. After all, students who volunteer to read something as dry and challenging as Descartes’ “Discourse on Methods” are probably not doing so just to avoid a statistics test.
But how can one justify using Great Books to fulfill the Speech 180 requirement? Being forced to lead a group discussion on a nearly finished classic may fill a student with the same butterflies others get before public speaking, but nothing in Great Books can substitute for standing before classmates and learning the art so valued since the classic works of ancient Greece.
While it’s possible students might opt to take Great Books as a means of avoiding their own public speaking fear, as communication professor Dr. Rick Rowland suggested, such a plan would be disastrous for someone not committed to the Great Books challenge.
And it is a challenge. I know many others share my opinion that completing the Great Books Colloquium and reading the most influential works of the past 2000 years is one of my greatest accomplishments at Pepperdine. I will graduate college with the knowledge that I analyzed the same material that those other guys read at top-50 schools. No one force-fed me another person’s interpretation of the literature (a few trips to Sparknotes.com not withstanding).
Sure, by taking Great Books I never had to take a first-year seminar, lower division English or upper division religion classes. But I’ll never doubt for a second that the pile of marked up works near my desk, from Plato’s “Republic” to Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” will stay with me as long as anything else I remember about this beautiful absurdity of a university. And that’s not before I recall the friendships formed when 15 students agree to take on way too much reading for four straight classes.
So even if some students never learn basic math skills or how to speak in public, hopefully through Great Books they will at least gain an insight into how to explain the big questions.
Although, if Oedipus did not kill Laius 39.85 kilometers outside Thebes — 3 hours and 36 minutes after his departure — maybe I should have taken a math class, too.
September 11, 2003