About St. John’s College
Audio Recordings of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan from the
Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, two academics with revolutionary educational ideas, were instrumental in creating the New Program at St. John’s College. They were brought on board in 1937 to completely revamp the college’s curriculum. Buchanan, who was appointed dean, devised a course of study with the great books as the basis for discussion classes, and created a unified, all-required curriculum with no departments or majors. Under the leadership of Barr as president and Buchanan as dean, the St. John's great books program began to attract nationwide attention, and continues to do so to this day.
Buchanan went on to become a senior fellow at theCenter for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal political think tank in Santa Barbara, California. The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Audio Archive (hosted by the University of California Santa Barbara) offers several recordings of Scott Buchanan (and one of Stringfellow Barr). Below are links to those recordings.
Program 122: Res Publica (The Public Thing)
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/csdi/a7680.html
Scott Buchanan suggests that Americans are not yet fulfilling the role of public citizens that the Constitution envisioned for them due to a misreading of the First Amendment. Rather than seeing it as merely proscribing the areas in which government may not infringe upon the rights of the citizen, he argues that it should be read as prescribing what the government must do to encourage citizens to exercise the freedoms guaranteed under the Amendment. July 1964. [part 1, 21:57; part 2, 21:40]
Program 17: On Revolution
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/csdi/a7505.html
Philosopher Scott Buchanan discusses the nature and source of revolution. When we in the West speak of revolution, we most often mean the kind symbolized by the American and French upheavals. But these were very different from the politicized peasant revolutions going on in the 1960s. Mr. Buchanan's view of revolution is of a process of education in which the revolutionaries change and learn as their actions change a situation. [ca. 1963]. [part 1, 29:23; part 2, 28:17]
Program 12: Educational Bankruptcy
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/csdi/a7496.html
Stringfellow Barr talks with Stanley K. Sheinbaum about the decline and fall in American education. Jan. 16, 1962. [29:31]
Program 114: Science: For Truth or Good? - I
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/csdi/a7671.html
The Center's Scott Buchanan interviews Helmut Krauch of the Heidelberg Institute, who is the head of a group of German scientists seeking a policy to direct all scientific research to the service of human welfare, in the wake of the Nazi's misuse of scientific research. While sympathetic to the goal, Professor Buchanan is wary of the implications for freedom and truth. Nov. 27, 1963. [24:23]
Program 428: History and the Hippies
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/csdi/a6684.html
Historian Arnold J. Toynbee speaks with Scott Buchanan, Raghavan Iyer, and John R. Seeley about the unlearned lessons of history, the futility of patriotism, and his admiration for the hippie movement. May 1, 1967. [part 1, 22:08; part 2, 21:56]