Our English Syllabus

          In “Our English Syllabus,” Lewis tries his best to describe English classes at the University of Oxford.  To do this he goes extremely deep into what the mission of the classes is, ultimately defining two methods of then-modern schools.  Lewis speaks of education versus learning.  This provocative issue would never be opened had one brilliant mind not existed.  It is a bizarre concept unless it is explained thoroughly, which only C. S. Lewis can do.

          When I first read Lewis’s statement, “universities…are fighting against education on behalf of learning,” I was somewhat bracing for the usual Calvin College speech: We’re not like the other schools. When you get outta here, you’ll be a well-rounded individual who has gone through LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION.

          Though this was a minor point of the syllabus (which, by the way, I do not disagree with… Excuse my previous sarcasm), the major themes to the syllabus were distinguishing a model student-professor relationship, as well as providing an accurate representation of how material for courses are selected.  The first point I mentioned is spelled out when Lewis states on page 85. 

“…the university student is essentially a different person from the school pupil. He is not a candidate for humanity; he is, in theory, already human. He is not a patient; nor is his tutor an operator who is doing something to him. The student is, or ought to be, a young man who is already beginning to follow learning for its own sake, and who attaches himself to an older student, not precisely to be taught, but to pick up what he can. From the very beginning the two ought to be fellow students.  And that means they ought not to be thinking about each other but about the subject. The schoolmaster must think about the pupil: everything he says is said to improve the boy's character or open his mind-the schoolmaster is there to make the pupil a 'good' man.  And the pupil must think about the master. Obedience is one of the virtues he has come to him to learn; his motive for reading one book and neglecting another must constantly be that he was told to.”

Though Calvin does not necessarily wear this precedent on its sleeve, in is nonetheless a common theme that I have had with one of my professors over my first semester here.  That class was by far my best experience of the semester, and for that I think that Lewis is a genius by expressing the syllabus in such an intricately beautiful manner.

Lewis’s other main point, of how course studies are selected, was also a pleasant change from the usual Calvin College message.  Basically, Lewis tells the students that there is an infinite amount of material for any subject, and a committee of professors will ultimately make the decisions on what is taught.  Lewis is saying that he will, unfortunately, short the students.  He never actually expresses this, but I believe that is his message.  He explains how he will select topics, using the picture of a tree.  The most important topics located in the roots of the tree, and proceeding up the trunk and out to the more unstable branches.

Overall, this syllabus is dynamite.  If every professor at Calvin enveloped himself in this approach, I believe that I would have an experience like the one in the first semester for every class.