The Critical Compass Podcast - The Great Books Program ｜ John Serafini & Steve Bertucci

00:00:00.000 saying what does it mean to be a happy person what does it mean to be a good person

00:00:04.400 for our own experience like thinking well practically how am i going about through life

00:00:07.920 they're like intellectual questions and then there are questions that we have to answer

00:00:13.680 very practically in our own lives great books programs the heart and soul of it all so all

00:00:20.080 that leads uh to the great books and this uh work of inquiry that we are into in the classes

00:00:27.120 what are other options i mean people have thought about these things and being able to read through

00:00:33.760 them on their own terms right not interpreted from somebody else but to read the source texts

00:00:39.800 themselves at length and then to be able to talk about them and try to in your own mind

00:00:45.600 come to what you actually think and believe about the world and to change your mind

00:00:57.120 Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Critical Compass podcast. My name is Mike, and of course, always

00:01:10.900 here with me is James. We are very pleased to be joined by Mr. John Serafini. He's the owner of

00:01:16.920 Serafini Books, Calgary's bookstore for classics and fine editions. And we're also joined by Mr.

00:01:23.420 Steve Bertucci. He's a director with the Angelicum Academy and, uh, the, uh, director of the Great

00:01:29.400 Books program. Uh, he's been doing that. I believe he said before we hit record, uh, for, uh, 27

00:01:34.320 years and they started on, uh, they started on dial up. And so this is an online program. Uh,

00:01:40.860 and John in Calgary is, uh, very soon going to be taking this, uh, into a physical classroom.

00:01:47.720 And, uh, we're excited to just chat with these gentlemen, see, uh, you know, maybe they can,

00:01:52.200 uh open our minds to some uh some books that we haven't we're big internet guys you know

00:01:57.820 books are aren't they just uh antiquated things of the past john yeah no i uh you'll have to tell

00:02:04.680 the to the two guys who came to the store i don't know how long ago was that like a week or two ago

00:02:08.940 yeah yeah guilty there yeah we always seem to leave with something yeah i think so it's no

00:02:16.560 timeless for sure uh reading a good book that's uh like meeting an old friend if you're reading

00:02:22.160 and rereading it yeah so what was your um maybe if we can start with you john and then we'll have

00:02:28.560 steve weigh in on a little bit of the history here but what was your um what was your introduction to

00:02:34.640 the great books program and why have you why have you decided to to kind of re uh i don't know if

00:02:40.640 reformat or reshape or something like this but but bring it into the classroom

00:02:45.200 yeah uh well i've got steve to thank for that in many respects i started i think in 2007

00:02:53.680 when i was 14 i started the great books program online with steve and uh i guess dr james taylor

00:03:01.360 who's now passed away they were the moderators for my uh cohort for almost i guess it was four

00:03:08.080 years with the program and then i went off to college studied great books there as well

00:03:14.560 and like a socratic dialogue method in the honest program at franciscan university of steubenville

00:03:20.480 and just really had fallen in love with these books and this method of education

00:03:24.800 discussing books with people and then came back up to calgary was doing different business things

00:03:30.080 and then found my way into teaching again and then steve and i we reconnected uh kind of at

00:03:35.840 that point and have kept up i've been teaching with the program almost a decade now i think

00:03:41.600 online and with the bookstore that i'm doing obviously books are a great passion of mine

00:03:49.120 i knew that there was something really valuable about the program from my long experience with

00:03:53.920 it i wanted to be able to make it more human in some ways although i had a great experience online

00:03:59.440 i think that there's something really unique about forming a community

00:04:03.440 we're like embodied embedded persons being able to meet other people in person to see

00:04:08.720 facial expressions, to be able to have these deep conversations in person seemed to me just really

00:04:14.640 valuable. So I talked to Steve and another gentleman Pat Carmack with Angelicum and they

00:04:18.640 gave me the approval to go ahead with it and offer it here in Calgary. So we're doing that

00:04:22.320 for high schoolers and adults of different ages who are interested in lifelong learning.

00:04:27.360 So that's kind of the thing we got going up in September.

00:04:30.160 yeah perfect and i i know last time we talked even mentioned without getting too deep like the way

00:04:38.040 that we converse with each other directly maps into the way that we think in a sense and so is

00:04:45.980 that that's going to be a component of it as well yeah for sure so we can talk about socratic method

00:04:51.900 but um i think a lot of times we don't really know what we think until we say it to other people

00:04:56.960 right maybe we think we've got a clarity of thought in our own mind and then we try to

00:05:01.700 express it and that can be a difficult process to say exactly what we mean maybe because we don't

00:05:06.960 fully know what it is in detail oftentimes sometimes we've got clear ideas but being able

00:05:13.120 to have that exploratory format of conversation which is what we do in the program it's socratic

00:05:19.780 method so the people are the moderators like steve or myself we are helping students explore these

00:05:26.660 books by asking questions and talking to them about the great ideas that have captured the

00:05:33.540 mind of Western civilization for millennia and the great thinkers of the West. And so

00:05:37.840 they're the students, the participants are able to read these texts, to encounter these

00:05:41.880 thoughts on their own, and then to talk about them with their peers. So if that's high schoolers

00:05:48.560 or college age people or older adults, to be able to explore these together.

00:05:53.240 Well, I actually wanted to kind of pivot off that to Steve here. Steve, speaking in terms of learning how to communicate people, learning how to talk and learning how to think through talking, what's been your experience being with this program for almost 30 years at this point and kind of seeing how it has changed?

00:06:16.480 I know you mentioned before we started recording that this was, in as many words, sort of a bit of a passion project for you to, for you and your family to fill in the gaps in the education system that you didn't, that you guys didn't feel were being adequately, your children weren't being adequately educated.

00:06:37.480 educated um how has maybe give me the the 30 000 foot overview of what the last almost 30 years has

00:06:45.560 been with this program for you well uh oh gosh 30 000 just a little question well i think i'm

00:06:56.280 finally i'm beginning to become a semi-educated person

00:07:01.080 You know, it's an old canard, really, that I think everyone has heard about. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. And really the core of what you might call the wisdom of Socrates, insofar as he had wisdom, is that he was acutely aware of how little any of us knows.

00:07:28.260 I mean, if you consider the universe of knowables, it's a big universe of knowables, how much of that universe does any of us know?

00:07:40.400 Well, you know, we're almost infinitely ignorant when looked at from that perspective.

00:07:49.160 So the very end of education, I think, that's the place to start.

00:07:54.900 In fact, in our orientation class for our incoming new students, we spend the class, excuse me, at least part of the class, talking about the very end in view of education.

00:08:09.900 When I used to, I don't do this much anymore at all, but I used to travel about the country giving talks about education to mostly homeschooling people.

00:08:21.900 And I would ask them, why are you doing this?

00:08:24.900 what's the point it's a lot of time and trouble and expense that you're going to

00:08:30.460 to educate your children why are you doing this and you get all sorts of answers I would get all

00:08:37.600 sorts of responses to that question I want them to know where to find the knowledge that they need

00:08:45.700 or I want them to be a good citizen or I want them to get a good job and all these responses

00:08:52.760 and i would i would ask well why do you want them to be a good citizen why do you want them to have

00:08:57.640 a good job why should they know how to read and write what's the point of all that eventually

00:09:05.400 you know they would get annoyed with me asking that question but it comes down to

00:09:11.720 uh i want my kids to be happy so all education in my opinion properly so called is education

00:09:20.440 for happiness and that of course brings up a very key question well who's the happy person

00:09:28.520 and we agree both of us in the program with angelica we agree with our old friend socrates

00:09:36.360 who would say the happy person the happy man the happy woman is the one who is good and noble

00:09:42.600 Well, who's that? There's always another question. Who's the good and noble person? Well,

00:09:51.860 Socrates would tell you that it's the person who loves what is good, who loves what is noble,

00:09:58.840 who loves what is beautiful. You know, truth, goodness, and beauty. It's not enough just to

00:10:04.660 know what is true and know what's beautiful and know what's good if you don't love those things.

00:10:11.120 So if you love what's evil, false, and ugly, you aren't going to have a happy life.

00:10:16.100 You aren't going to have a good life.

00:10:18.020 So that's the end in view.

00:10:20.500 And we tell this to students that so knowledge is not the end of education.

00:10:27.420 It's a necessary means.

00:10:29.060 It's essential.

00:10:29.860 We have to learn what's true, good, and beautiful.

00:10:32.640 But so the primary, and I'll stop.

00:10:36.320 I won't keep going on.

00:10:37.520 But the primary pedagogical question is not how do I help my students to know what's true, but rather it's how do I help my students to love what's true?

00:10:51.300 There's a great deal of mystery involved in this sort of thing.

00:10:55.620 But so that's the beginning.

00:10:58.560 And that's really why we started the program.

00:11:05.040 Because if you go to your local school, public schools, ask the principal or ask the superintendent, you know, what are these kids doing here?

00:11:14.500 What's the point of all this?

00:11:15.920 They're not going to tell you.

00:11:17.480 It's to learn to love the things we ought to love.

00:11:21.860 so uh anyway in the great books are the uh well people for instance who uh were educated say in

00:11:31.380 the early middle ages and the later middle ages well even up to the present day but back in those

00:11:36.980 days uh if someone like say in the 13th century someone's going to school in the west in the

00:11:43.780 western world what are they reading well they're reading the great books they're discussing the

00:11:50.260 great books in their writing about what they encounter in those works anyway with that i'll

00:11:58.100 i'll be quiet well that seems to resonate with like with why we even have a podcast is we were

00:12:09.700 curious about ideas and wanted to stress test ideas but you need that curiosity to even get

00:12:17.460 started down this path and some people are blessed with that curiosity and sometimes

00:12:23.200 that curiosity needs a little bit of needs help to foster that that um that curiosity

00:12:31.220 in a space and so i'm curious what the biggest i guess like what was the biggest surprise

00:12:44.220 By engaging in this program and going through it, what were like, what was one of the biggest

00:12:52.040 kind of revelations that you've, that you've come, or that you've come to in practice? 0.67

00:13:00.920 Well beyond, as I was talking about earlier, realizing more and more what an ignoramus

00:13:10.420 i am it was uh well i'll tell you the best thing about it the best part of this whole experience

00:13:18.660 has been seeing uh this appetite these the students when they get a taste of what's true

00:13:30.660 when they when they see it you know and it can happen

00:13:34.500 and well at any time during a class really but when they get a taste of it and they develop

00:13:42.900 i think that you were actually touching on it the way you were speaking there

00:13:47.780 they develop an appetite a greater curiosity a greater desire to know and to see that

00:13:54.900 uh spark get lit or to see that spark ignite in them this this desire and as they go through

00:14:06.660 the program and they spend hours and hours and hours in conversation about what they encounter

00:14:12.180 in these works um the appetite grows it doesn't get it doesn't get uh satisfied so to speak

00:14:22.340 The more they pursue this path of inquiry, the greater is the satisfaction, the greater is the love.

00:14:36.060 And so for me, anyway, personally, that's been the greatest thing to see that in these students and come to know the students there.

00:14:47.820 That's a great, yeah, that's a great thought.

00:14:50.820 um yeah you you uh you'll yeah you'll never be satisfied when you uh when you kind of crack the

00:14:57.720 uh when you when you break the facade open you know there's just so much more at the end of the

00:15:03.500 of the rabbit hole right john i wanted to ask you um you know we talked about this a little bit

00:15:09.000 uh in person and maybe we can kind of expand on these ideas a little bit as you may know um

00:15:14.260 I don't know if you know Steve, but most of our channel, we've been fairly focused over the last year and a half or so on the matter of Alberta independence.

00:15:24.160 And we have a big audience of people who are fairly heterodox in their thinking.

00:15:30.760 You know, they're maybe, you know, disillusioned conservatives and maybe even, you know, we certainly know a not unsubstantial number of disillusioned liberals and left-wing thinkers who have simply just become, you know, a little bit jaded with our political system in Canada here.

00:15:52.360 But, John, maybe you can speak to the idea that we sort of touched on about how just what it means to become a critical thinker and why a healthy knowledge of the classical liberal arts, if you will, how that helps with that.

00:16:13.520 Is that too broad?

00:16:15.320 No, I don't think so.

00:16:16.600 I mean, take a look at university campuses, when people try to engage in what Socrates did.

00:16:24.040 And Socrates, you know, this is not a problem that's exclusive to our own age. He was put to

00:16:28.040 death for inquiring fundamentally, right? But, you know, somebody like Francis Witteson, who's

00:16:35.980 asking questions, Peter Boghossian or others, the level of antipathy there is to genuine inquiry,

00:16:43.860 not universally, but amongst broad sections of the post-secondary institutions that are there.

00:16:52.080 I talk with high schoolers who are not in the program yet and their parents about what they're

00:16:57.180 experiencing in schooling and the level of difficulty there is in engaging with dialogue

00:17:02.740 with their peers. And for most of them, they find it almost impossible to really have a substantive

00:17:08.900 conversation about anything that could even halfway be considered inflammatory and it's not

00:17:19.900 even the right word. But it's even asking basic questions and getting down to that level.

00:17:25.060 A lot of the classrooms are not really structured in a way that enables people to explore in that

00:17:30.880 fashion. And that's basically all that we are doing is we're reading the text and trying to

00:17:35.280 understand you know plutarch's lives or uh you know the odyssey or the dialogues of plato or

00:17:41.280 democracy in america by de tocqueville or the american state papers whatever like we're reading

00:17:46.000 very rich literature uh and different books from history and talking about universals of human

00:17:54.800 experience and asking fundamental questions about the great ideas and mortimer adler and others put

00:18:01.120 out different lists of i think he the most recent version of the great books set they had 102 great

00:18:07.600 ideas like justice and beauty and truth and good and evil well what are these things to be able to

00:18:14.480 think critically i think you have to get down to the basics of you know again to what steve was

00:18:20.800 saying what does it mean to be a happy person what does it mean to be a good person you know

00:18:26.080 and then things that are more for our own experience like thinking well practically

00:18:30.480 how am i going about through life they're like intellectual questions um so to speak

00:18:38.880 and then there are questions we have to answer very practically in our own lives when we maybe

00:18:44.000 do something that we regret doing well how do you come back from that you have somebody who

00:18:49.280 passed away like a child in your family how do you deal with that that's not critical thinking

00:18:53.840 exactly but it's like the search for wisdom how do we deal with the world in which we live and

00:18:59.040 perhaps that as a fundamental intellectual goal the highest good of the mind wisdom is kind of

00:19:06.640 what we're trying to help in culture and students is by asking basic questions to be able to explore

00:19:14.880 different stories and ideas that have resonated with people for all of human history and then to

00:19:22.400 And to be able to help them enter into that great conversation, to be not passive recipients,

00:19:27.400 but active recipients from these writings, the best thoughts of the men and women of

00:19:31.680 the past, to be able to actively receive that, to think about it in their own minds.

00:19:37.060 And then to be able to, well, do I agree with this?

00:19:39.760 What are they saying?

00:19:40.760 To try to understand it and then to make assessments about it, to think about it from a very basic

00:19:45.440 level and then to come to their own beliefs about the way that the world is and the way

00:19:51.580 that they ought to live their lives. I mean, that is critical thinking, right? Like, how

00:19:55.900 do you do that? And I don't see that. Unfortunately, I had the great honor of being with Steve

00:20:03.820 for four years. And I mean, my own experience, I hope I'm thinking critically, perhaps not

00:20:11.120 all the time. But being in the program for that time was

00:20:16.680 of tremendous benefit to me. I often tell people that it was the best part of

00:20:21.580 the entirety of my education, from elementary through post-secondary. It was the most influential,

00:20:28.580 most substantive part of that education. Why?

00:20:36.740 Steve and Dr. Taylor and other people, I knew that they cared about what I thought that

00:20:44.100 they took me and my ideas seriously. That we were, you know, I was 14. Some people might

00:20:49.980 look at a 14 year old and say, well, what kind of thoughts do they have that are substantial?

00:20:54.600 But they treated me with seriousness, which is how I want to treat the people who are

00:20:58.520 a part of the program, whether they're high schoolers or others, that your thoughts matter.

00:21:03.720 What you say matters, how you live matters.

00:21:06.840 And that we're kind of on this journey together, exploring these ideas to hopefully help you

00:21:12.560 become more wise and a better person.

00:21:16.120 seems like a pretty big goal for a program perhaps um but that was my experience that's why i came

00:21:21.480 away with someone has to do it yeah and since you've gone through that you will you have that

00:21:30.680 intimate knowledge of how to structure in a way to kind of capture that same spark for others and

00:21:37.960 one thing i've kind of i was thinking as you're unpacking that was there's a lot of people that

00:21:44.520 they do live an unexamined life in a way and even highly educated people run the risk of

00:21:51.480 kind of falling into either a tunnel vision or a routine that doesn't force them to contend with

00:21:58.440 ideas outside of the things that they really know well we've kind of chatted about this on the

00:22:03.960 channel before you you do have hyper specialization through our education system in a way that

00:22:10.760 you get people maybe you'll get a kidney doctor who's really great at everything that the kidney

00:22:17.800 has to do with but outside of that they're not looking at these systems

00:22:22.520 so you get people siloed in both their education but also siloed in in these kind of groups these

00:22:29.880 bubbles through the online world which we are it's hard not to fall into these kind of algorithmic

00:22:36.680 bubbles but it's takes a lot of intention to be aware of the bubbles that you're in

00:22:42.600 and to step outside of them so i i do see a need to stress test ideas in a guided setting

00:22:49.880 to examine them but also like as we try to pull people out of some of these bubbles it's worth

00:22:55.000 noting like we're not the first people to go through some of these experiences some of the

00:23:00.920 things and these emotions that we're feeling right now that's not unique to 2026 right and so

00:23:08.600 taking that lens back to the greats i think is also a very it grounds it in this very real

00:23:16.040 human experience which pulls us out of this tunnel vision if that makes sense

00:23:22.040 no it totally does i mean i think it's a great counterbalance to for instance reading the news

00:23:27.080 which I think can be a beneficial thing, knowing what's going on in the world today, but to have

00:23:31.480 this ballast in place where you're able to have a historical perspective and understand the roots

00:23:36.280 of different ideas. We have different conceptions of what government should be. Where did those come

00:23:44.120 from? Are you familiar with the philosophical underpinnings for them? Do you know how to

00:23:51.800 challenge them what are other options i mean people have thought about these things and being

00:23:57.800 able to read through them on their own terms right not interpreted from somebody else but to read the

00:24:03.960 source texts themselves at length and then to be able to talk about them and try to in your own

00:24:10.120 mind come to what you actually think and believe about the world and to change your mind um i mean

00:24:16.280 is a big deal. And part of what we're talking about is really liberal education. People

00:24:22.780 talk about like a liberal arts degree, but to be liberally educated, or, you know, the

00:24:28.900 word liberal means free, right? Is that you're trying to help people be free to think about

00:24:34.680 again, as I was talking about earlier, the doctor that you're talking about, it have

00:24:39.680 that very specialized knowledge. It is a beautiful thing, right? But everybody has common human

00:24:46.180 problems and situations that they'll need to deal with. And where do we learn how to

00:24:51.420 deal with that other than through life and with family? You know, having broad exposure

00:24:56.340 to past experiences of other people is certainly one very good way to understand how to deal

00:25:01.220 with situations that we come through today. And that we're not so terminally unique and

00:25:05.440 that our sufferings are not the first time in the history of mankind that they've occurred.

00:25:09.420 Right? To have that kind of perspective is very helpful. Yeah.

00:25:14.420 a great thought and and i'd love to i'd love to bring steve back in here on on this question um

00:25:19.780 steve i know i know you're still a young man but your your your uh your timing your time with this

00:25:28.620 program betrays your experience and so i wanted to get your opinion on um when you started doing

00:25:35.780 this in the i guess in the late 90s or early 2000s you know were were people having the same

00:25:43.440 sort of conversations about, um, the gaps and the, the, the lack of, um, you know, people talk

00:25:52.600 about now, uh, and you know, I, I have a young family we were talking about earlier. My, I'm

00:25:58.120 lucky enough to have a wife who, who is a former elementary school teacher. So we, we are very

00:26:02.320 strongly considering homeschooling our kids when they, when they come of age, if we can, you know,

00:26:06.240 make it work financially, like that would be perfect for me. Like I'm, I'm so confident that

00:26:10.720 our kids would have a great resource at home. And I know that they would be insulated in a way from

00:26:17.380 some of the, I mean, I guess if you wanted to be charitable about it, the thematic direction

00:26:25.440 of modern education in many ways. Were people, you know, almost 30 years ago having the same

00:26:31.640 sort of conversations about uh the the trajectory of of uh of public education

00:26:36.960 well yeah in my experience uh i mean i i believe or not i can even remember when i was in school

00:26:47.680 myself uh i believe in high school yeah in high school and people uh education has been i'd say

00:26:57.080 in the latter, really, in the latter part of the 20th century to the present, so many

00:27:05.300 people talk about education, and everybody who talks about education, they talk about

00:27:11.440 how important it is, and, but if you ask, well, what is it, what is education? We were

00:27:21.180 talking about that earlier, John was saying, we often, we don't know what we think we know

00:27:26.400 until we try to explain it.

00:27:29.240 St. Augustine's got a great story about that.

00:27:31.200 He said in his confessions, he says,

00:27:34.240 if somebody asks me what time is,

00:27:39.600 they ask me if I know what it is,

00:27:41.000 I say, oh, of course I know what time is.

00:27:43.040 Oh, well, what is it?

00:27:44.340 He said, all of a sudden, I don't have any idea what time is.

00:27:48.300 And it's kind of the same with education.

00:27:51.800 People give you cliches and pat answers,

00:27:56.400 But if you simply inquire, you know, what they mean by these things, they, for the most part, in my opinion, they really don't know.

00:28:09.000 When we were talking earlier about the experience of what we talk about in the classroom, I always tell people what we talk about are common human ideas and common human experiences.

00:28:23.760 And this notion of being familiar, I mean, we were criticized sharply when we started the program, you know, saying, well, 14-year-olds, they can't be reading Plato and Aristotle.

00:28:40.720 Well, it turns out they can, and they can understand what they're reading, at least to some degree.

00:28:47.560 Does anybody, I would assert that nobody understands everything that they encounter in these works.

00:28:55.800 But anyway, this scene in the Iliad came to mind, and I don't know why,

00:29:02.960 but at one part of the, in the story of the Iliad, the Trojans are defending their city.

00:29:11.280 And Hector is the primary defender.

00:29:15.660 he's the one who's leading the defense of troy and in the midst of uh the battles and such

00:29:24.140 in some ground time that hector had he's he meets with his wife on the walls of the city

00:29:30.220 and they have their young son just almost a baby astyanax there and andromache his wife i'm using

00:29:39.100 this in his example of what we talked about in the classes and and james mentioned the emotions

00:29:45.580 earlier and i'm going to bring that into this example um anyway i'll draw on john case asking

00:29:54.620 hector to stop exposing himself to so much danger when he's out in the field fighting she said she

00:30:01.980 She said, stay back here near the walls and you can direct the fighting from here.

00:30:06.720 Well, one question is, is Andromache out of line for suggesting to her husband to not expose himself to so much danger? 0.96

00:30:22.140 what are her or on the other hand is she not only uh in line so to speak does she have a duty

00:30:31.580 to talk to her husband to ask him about this sort of thing she has a son

00:30:35.580 so there's a layer of obligations here does does andromache have obligations to her son

00:30:41.660 does she have obligations to hector does she have obligations to her neighbors and fellow citizens

00:30:48.140 well she i would say i would suggest that she has obligations to all those people well what's

00:30:57.400 the hierarchy of the obligations what comes first and you ask the students a question like that

00:31:03.820 that's a lot to chew on and most 14 year olds haven't just haven't thought that way and then

00:31:12.060 And you say, well, what about Hector?

00:31:14.140 Doesn't he have obligations to his wife and to his son?

00:31:18.060 And he has obligations to the city, doesn't he?

00:31:20.140 Well, what's his first obligation?

00:31:23.340 Is it to his wife or is it to the city,

00:31:29.620 the country, so to speak?

00:31:32.060 And there's a great question, well, what is the country?

00:31:34.800 What is meant by that phrase?

00:31:37.340 Well, this is an awful lot to,

00:31:39.140 There's hours and hours worth of conversation there for these teenagers to discuss marital obligations, parental obligations, community obligations.

00:31:53.420 And how do you balance all these things?

00:31:56.860 What are the principles involved and how do you apply them here?

00:32:01.200 Anyway, I mentioned that.

00:32:02.640 Oh, and the emotions thing.

00:32:04.300 And along with this idea, it ties in with learning to love what we ought to love, learning

00:32:11.020 to love what's true, what's good, what's beautiful.

00:32:14.080 Education isn't just an intellectual experience.

00:32:17.960 It's not just an intellectual endeavor.

00:32:21.520 It's because we humans aren't simply intellectuals.

00:32:25.780 We have passions, we have appetites, we have emotions, all these things being good in themselves,

00:32:33.640 but they need to be ordered properly ordered by reason um and so does hector love his wife yes he

00:32:42.040 does does he love the city yes he does does he love his son yes he does but these loves

00:32:50.680 some goods are greater than other goods that's why we have a hierarchy of obligations

00:32:55.080 because there's a hierarchy of goods some things are more good than others

00:33:00.520 And those kinds of conversations talking about, sorry to jump in here, Steve, just

00:33:09.760 as one example, I think happen, but happen rarely in school.

00:33:21.700 So like, what kind of education do you want for your children?

00:33:25.400 I think people have talked about that forever.

00:33:29.560 you were asking Mike about, well, have people had the same concerns? In Steve's time, that

00:33:36.060 I can't comment to. I mean, as a father, definitely now I have those concerns. I mean, my son

00:33:44.500 is 12 now, so he'll be starting the program within a couple of years. But not even just

00:33:52.980 political questions that are tied to education, but what Steve was talking about earlier,

00:33:58.120 How does your school or the teachers, how do they conceive of their job, of their role?

00:34:03.000 To what end are they directing your child?

00:34:04.760 Is it to be an activist?

00:34:06.840 Is it just to get a good job?

00:34:08.560 Is it to be a specialist?

00:34:10.180 As you were talking earlier, I mean, I think any responsible parent should be asking those

00:34:14.940 kinds of questions.

00:34:15.940 It's like, okay, well, what is a likely outcome of my child's education, right?

00:34:21.780 What is the likely outcome of the institution or otherwise that I'm sending my child to

00:34:26.600 that they're receiving their education within um you know there may be certain types of questions

00:34:32.520 i mean my son was just at the calgary classical academy he's homeschooling now um but i mean their

00:34:40.200 waitlist is just one example i mean it's i think over 5 000 waitlisted students uh between the

00:34:48.040 three institutions and they've got enrollment of i don't know what number it's small in comparison

00:34:53.800 And people are asking these questions, they're looking for alternatives, they're looking

00:34:56.860 for good alternatives.

00:35:00.660 And I think that that's part of what we're offering is to be able to give people the

00:35:05.960 means.

00:35:06.960 I mean, we haven't talked about some of the practical quote unquote benefits of the program

00:35:12.800 like that.

00:35:13.800 You can get college credit in high school, which is amazing.

00:35:16.380 You can get like half a university degree done.

00:35:19.200 I know, uh, a relative of mine who went through the program and got her degree by 19.

00:35:25.040 Like why are people talking about the aims of education?

00:35:27.500 Why are people, uh, you know, she got her undergraduate when she was 19 years old and

00:35:31.960 then went on to do a master's before her peers were done, they're undergraduates, right?

00:35:36.700 Uh, you know, aside from some of the more, uh, philosophical questions about education,

00:35:42.840 I mean, are you happy with the way that the education is being conducted and the

00:35:48.960 results that you're getting as a parent, right? Wouldn't be nice to be able to have your child

00:35:54.320 get indoctrinated a little bit less at college as an example. And I say not every institution is the

00:36:02.640 same, but that happens enough that parents are concerned about it, not just where their child is

00:36:09.200 for secondary education, but for post-secondary. Are they going to lose their kids if they spend

00:36:14.000 all this time and love nurturing and helping raise to be the young people that they are?

00:36:18.960 I mean, there are a lot of other practical benefits as well.

00:36:22.560 Steve, I am actually curious that we were talking before the podcast started about you

00:36:29.900 and Pat kind of kicking up the program.

00:36:32.520 I mean, this is a bit self-indulgent of me.

00:36:35.860 Perhaps I hope it's a benefit to listeners too.

00:36:39.280 What was that experience?

00:36:40.280 You said you got some criticism at the time, but Pat had a young family as did you, Pat

00:36:45.580 Carmack.

00:36:46.680 What was that experience like?

00:36:48.200 kind of leaping into the unknown in a great way and well i'll try to be really brief here but uh

00:36:56.600 yeah don't be brief okay yeah as i'd mentioned uh i had left the seminary uh earlier and i

00:37:06.760 i fortunately uh i got well and uh ended up getting married and starting family and uh

00:37:14.760 uh anyway uh as i mentioned pat he married later and when his kids got to uh school age he called

00:37:25.300 me up but what are you doing for education how'd you because at that time you know now there's i

00:37:31.240 don't know how many homeschool programs there are out there yeah no idea but when karen and i started

00:37:37.040 there weren't any, or virtually none. So I just started doing research. I lived in the

00:37:46.460 library basement, looking through their old books down there and school curricula that

00:37:54.140 they had archived. Anyway, Pat decided he didn't like any of it. By this time, there

00:38:03.420 were some homeschooling programs out there he decided he didn't like any of them so he decided

00:38:09.900 to just uh put together one himself so his aim uh basically was to buy all the english grammar

00:38:20.300 texts all the math texts all the history texts go through them not just on his own

00:38:26.060 and determine which are the best, whether they cost a great deal or cost very little.

00:38:33.560 He just wanted the best.

00:38:35.260 Anyway, he'd kind of gone through all that, and he called me up.

00:38:40.800 I had told him, I said, well, he gave me an idea of what he was going to do.

00:38:44.380 And I said, okay, well, if you get that all put together, give me a call.

00:38:48.160 So he did.

00:38:50.200 And I decided to get into it with him.

00:38:55.440 And I became kind of the public face.

00:38:59.040 I traveled around to conferences around the country giving talks and that sort of thing as we were trying to just get it off the ground.

00:39:07.760 How did the Great Books Program specifically emerge from that?

00:39:11.200 Because you had some interactions with Mortimer Adler towards the end of his life.

00:39:16.800 But where did the Great Books specifically?

00:39:18.420 Because there's a whole Angelicum, which if people don't know, is an excellent curriculum beyond the Great Books Program.

00:39:25.020 which is for children 14 years and older. They also have a good books program, Logic for Children,

00:39:29.980 Philosophy for Children, and a bunch of other programs. They've got a full K, actually nursery,

00:39:35.680 I think, nursery through basically baccalaureate program, which has been developed over that time

00:39:42.380 in many, many partnerships with different institutions. So definitely check out Angelicum.

00:39:47.860 But yeah, how did the Great Books program start specifically?

00:39:50.440 Well, the Great Books Program is the end in view, so to speak, of all the other courses that we offer. The Great Books Program is the heart and soul of it all. So all that leads to the Great Books and this work of inquiry that we are into in the classes.

00:40:13.340 But anyway, that's how it all started.

00:40:17.260 And 2000, year 2000, the fall of 2000 was our first year when we started.

00:40:27.100 Yeah.

00:40:29.580 James, go ahead.

00:40:30.900 Yeah, definitely. So, John, you're talking about some of the issues with traditional schooling, and we're seeing kind of a pattern of you've got multiple institutions that seem to be in an alignment.

00:40:50.760 They all have, I wouldn't say liberal, it's more of a leftist, captured by very, very progressive leftist ideas.

00:40:59.360 Some people say woke, and we could kind of wrap that up with more of a ideas that favor grievance and oppression dynamics as a, like, they attribute any equality, inequality to oppression dynamics.

00:41:16.760 So rather than the liberal sense of like being accepting of ideas and being open to exploring all of that, which seems to be strange that those on the right are now more open to ideas that don't always fit their kind of worldview.

00:41:36.780 So, with institutional dominance comes the need for parallel institutions.

00:41:46.480 And I noticed that you are also going to be at a conference coming up that we are at.

00:41:51.980 We are at the Capitalism and Morality in Calgary.

00:41:57.440 I believe it's September 11th and 12th.

00:42:01.560 That's right.

00:42:02.380 So, you're a speaker there.

00:42:03.520 Frigus Harchman, who's heading that up.

00:42:05.060 But yeah, Fergus Hodgson's friend of the channel, wonderful guy, and he's pushing towards these parallel institutions.

00:42:14.780 And I am very happy to see many people seeing the need to develop this side of things.

00:42:24.360 Let it be supporting young minds and developing that side of things or supporting even the need to like.

00:42:32.520 some of the supporting institutions around

00:42:36.860 like where do people

00:42:40.920 go to have events and

00:42:42.640 right now there's still kind of a bias there

00:42:44.860 or are there support

00:42:46.820 groups for like if somebody wants to

00:42:49.000 if they have

00:42:50.440 if they want to get organized and they want political goals

00:42:52.860 there's plenty of support groups on the left

00:42:54.920 but not so much on the right

00:42:56.320 and if you want to make real

00:42:59.000 change it takes a collection

00:43:01.000 of

00:43:01.760 all these puzzle pieces together and change doesn't happen instantly but you're planting

00:43:08.500 these seeds that will ultimately unfold into like better people equipped to make change

00:43:15.960 in a more effective way yeah yeah if i can tell you a few things that you're bringing up together

00:43:21.820 this network of intermediary organizations having this rich you know individual at the top

00:43:29.100 and government or individual at the bottom, perhaps separate, disengaged from other people,

00:43:37.980 like kind of individualized, atomized individual, people might call it. And then like a collectivist

00:43:46.120 government first, everything is done by the government. This is like an in-between in order

00:43:51.720 to have effective movement in any direction. I mean, we're social creatures and being able to

00:43:57.240 interact and be in community with each other to learn from each other and then there's also

00:44:02.440 you know political reasons but i don't want to like dilute everything to the political

00:44:08.760 more than just that right we need rich good beautiful communities that we're making so

00:44:16.040 i think there's a lot that's going on with different conferences vergis uh is definitely

00:44:21.240 doing quite a bit on that um i think the first bit of the question that you're asking was about

00:44:27.240 like this is an alternative to some of the more you could call critical theory first schools of

00:44:35.860 thought. I'm not going to decry the entirety of the education I received. I was actually in an

00:44:42.480 education program at the U of C and left because of what I saw as malformation that was going on

00:44:50.420 for teachers fundamentally, and that that's a lot of it was going into the system. Now,

00:44:54.980 perhaps some people are more resilient to that but at least from what i'm seeing there and other

00:45:00.020 schools of education that is often um what's happening and people are you know i mentioned

00:45:07.140 the calgary classical academy earlier you've got many many homeschoolers cobit certainly increased

00:45:11.540 homeschooling numbers at least temporarily a lot people are finding ways to be in community

00:45:17.860 uh together i think that there are a lot of different responses this is one

00:45:21.780 um you know with what i'm doing with the program i want to help enable that through having a

00:45:26.580 bookstore in town as well that it can be like a seedbed so to speak for these different

00:45:31.220 intermediate organizations and groups that people can have they have a space where people can engage

00:45:36.180 in free dialogue with one another uh but i'm not sure well just tying a few things i hope it wasn't

00:45:46.180 directly a question part of that was just my my thoughts on loading but um i i see the need for

00:45:53.060 multiple different organizations but also i think two things might happen and they might both happen

00:46:01.460 you might have success stories in parallel institutions unfold and people see the benefits

00:46:08.740 and then either more parallel institutions come over that they become the dominant

00:46:13.060 institutions or they see the benefits of a meth of like of a method of teaching or

00:46:21.220 whatever's happening on the outside that there the demand is forces the current institutions to adopt

00:46:28.100 that or to revise in a way that has that same results and it's hard to know what direction

00:46:34.740 it would go to like i imagine you'd get a little bit of both but i'm curious if you have any

00:46:40.180 Any thoughts on that?

00:46:41.180 I don't have any prognostications on what I think is going to happen in education.

00:46:44.680 Hard to predict things, but yeah.

00:46:45.940 Yeah.

00:46:46.940 I can see where there are pressure points, at least in Alberta.

00:46:50.940 I've been, either myself or for my son, I've gone through public education, private with

00:46:57.240 the charter school system, homeschooling.

00:46:59.180 I mean, I've been a teacher in a variety of those settings.

00:47:03.180 I mean, I'm currently a substitute at a private school that uses Socratic method.

00:47:08.300 like another response, Acton Academy, which started here in Calgary recently.

00:47:16.540 Yeah. I mean, I think that the current government wants there to be alternatives. I think there's

00:47:21.260 some political reasons around the unions and having, you know, good alternatives where

00:47:27.900 institutions that are perhaps more ideologically aligned, not to, again, like they're trying to

00:47:31.980 give parents choice fundamentally, which is what people should be allowing government,

00:47:37.260 I don't think should be interfering in a lot of these things. And the worst if people think that

00:47:41.980 education is going to pot in the public sphere. And I'm not sure that's a universal thing. I don't

00:47:48.700 want to put that big of a mark. I think there are some people who are trying awfully hard

00:47:56.300 to do education in the public system well. I mean, I've met and know some of them.

00:48:01.980 But as a trend, I think that there's a lot that's not going well for identity politics

00:48:09.880 and some of the things that I think a lot of people are familiar with.

00:48:14.060 And the pressure is going to continue, the seeking out of alternatives is going to continue

00:48:18.420 to be present.

00:48:21.240 And if you have something really truly innovative that causes fundamental reassessment.

00:48:27.240 So for instance, Jordan Peterson's talked about why is it the case that the teacher

00:48:33.420 certification process is handled in a central fashion, right?

00:48:40.100 Like couldn't you de-professionalize the teacher profession, the teaching profession,

00:48:46.620 and allow basically schools to hire who they thought would qualify?

00:48:49.240 I mean, Steve, I don't think you've got an education degree.

00:48:52.860 You're not a certificated teacher, but you've been teaching very well for 30 years.

00:49:00.180 I'm not a certificated teacher, but people hire me either privately or for other reasons

00:49:05.420 because they see that what I do is valuable, right?

00:49:10.200 So I mean, I don't know if that's going to be reassessed in Alberta or elsewhere.

00:49:14.240 I think there are some movements on that in the States, but yeah, no, definitely in Alberta,

00:49:20.480 I mean, we've got the charter school system.

00:49:21.980 I think that's kind of within the public sphere to some extent, but it's a good outlet, a good way that people are seeking alternatives, types of schooling that they agree with, right, for their children.

00:49:36.160 Yeah, John, and people, I think, in Canada, especially, I mean, especially recently and maybe in the last 10, 15 years specifically, have a very bad case of credentialism in many fields, you know, where they believe that, you know, unless somebody has, you know, this particular string of letters after their name or before their name, then they're, you know, you're not qualified to do certain things.

00:49:59.720 And that's just just simply not the case. You know, I wanted to just briefly mention, I think I may Steve and John had had, you know, similar childhood teen teen years to you, gentlemen, where, you know, I was like my education is in philosophy.

00:50:16.280 Actually, I have a philosophy degree from the U of A.

00:50:19.980 I was a very poor student.

00:50:22.120 I just scraped by.

00:50:23.880 But I was super interested.

00:50:25.300 I was just a bad student.

00:50:26.360 And, you know, I was young.

00:50:28.580 But what I credit it with is it was teaching me how to think.

00:50:33.140 You know, even if I don't remember all the works I read.

00:50:36.300 And, you know, I just, you know, B's and C's get degrees, as they say, right?

00:50:40.900 I still really do value what I learned.

00:50:43.520 And I, and I got out of it in, um, 2012, 2013.

00:50:47.060 So kind of before the, the real sharp turn into, uh, into identity politics and, and

00:50:53.500 a lot of, um, sort of maybe more toxic leftist, uh, ideology entering the system.

00:50:59.560 So, so that was, you know, lucky for me.

00:51:01.820 But when I was a teen, you know, I was, you know, 13, 14, I was that guy too, you know,

00:51:06.160 looking up, you know, buying the, the, using my, you know, little part-time job money and

00:51:12.300 allowance money and stuff to buy little philosophy compendium books, you know, from, from Indigo and

00:51:17.780 whatever. Like I was super interested in philosophy and I wished that there was more option in my

00:51:23.640 school to kind of just get a primer on, you know, some of the greats, you know, the, the Greeks and

00:51:28.520 the, you know, the, the continental philosophers, just, just something, you know, and there really

00:51:32.160 wasn't, um, maybe to both you, Steve and John, if you can, if you can, uh, to people listening, like

00:51:39.220 what sort of kid uh has the ability to enter this program like do you have to be a you know do you

00:51:45.920 have to have a certain level of it like do you have to pass any tests like is it is it is it um

00:51:51.180 restrictive in in any way like that like what what sort of family would would put their child

00:51:56.900 in this program that's a good question excuse me yeah it is a good question uh it's really for

00:52:03.240 just about anybody. The primary qualification is really not one's academic background.

00:52:14.760 I would say it would be

00:52:20.360 social maturity. If one, for instance, sometimes we'll get people, excuse me, they have a 10 year

00:52:30.680 old 11 year old 12 year old reading at a college level which is not unusual uh to to encounter that

00:52:38.600 in homeschool kids however um a 10 year old and a 12 year old don't have typically they don't have

00:52:47.080 the emotional and social maturity than someone 14 or 15. those are really big years between there

00:52:55.160 And the kinds of conversations that 14- and 15-year-olds have, and that's just, you know, in the first year of the program, by the time they're 17, 18, still in the program, these are conversations that 10- and 12-year-olds aren't going to profit from as much as they would if they wait until they're 14 or 15 to get into it.

00:53:19.180 So, no, there's no academic background test.

00:53:24.860 The question or what I would say to parents is basically what I just said to you.

00:53:30.080 It's emotional and social maturity.

00:53:33.880 In ordinary, normal, what I would call normal 14-year-olds to 15-year-olds, they can read Homer.

00:53:41.300 They can read Herodotus, Thucydides.

00:53:44.300 They can read Plato, Aristotle.

00:53:46.820 They can discuss these things.

00:53:49.180 Yeah. I mean, I'd maybe make just one comment on that, that if you've, I guess slightly

00:53:59.420 different than the social emotional maturity, having a basic reading level, if somebody

00:54:09.260 was scrolling all the time and had never read a book, they may find it difficult. It's not

00:54:15.900 Yeah, I'm just giving an example there, I'm sure, people listening.

00:54:21.240 Yeah, I didn't mean to dismiss having a good academic background.

00:54:25.080 I mean, that's a great thing.

00:54:27.260 I'm just saying that we get people from all kinds of backgrounds.

00:54:30.560 I'll give you one quick story.

00:54:32.140 This was, oh, probably 15 years ago, and there was an inner city school in Washington, D.C.,

00:54:38.580 and I got a call from the principal one day inquiring about the great books,

00:54:44.400 And she said, frankly, our high school students, their academic background is abysmal.

00:54:53.380 She said they couldn't write an essay, if you ask them to, and so on.

00:55:00.540 And we talked about them.

00:55:01.320 She wanted to know if they could enter the program.

00:55:07.380 And I left the decision up to her and the parents.

00:55:11.120 and they decided to do it and they struggled mightily with the reading they struggled mightily

00:55:19.260 with the writing but they were terrific in the classroom very collegial very cordial

00:55:27.520 very well-mannered they were wonderful in the classroom at the end of the year

00:55:33.020 because it was really really difficult on the academic side you know the reading and the writing

00:55:39.620 basically and she asked them she asked the principal she asked the students

00:55:45.320 we can do this again next year if you guys want to or we can just move on to do something else

00:55:54.600 because we know how difficult it was for you and all the students wanted to come back and do it

00:55:59.940 again so they did so yeah it's it's much better to have a good academic background in the basic

00:56:08.140 literary skills you know reading writing uh than to not have it but if you don't have that

00:56:16.460 good background yeah you're going to struggle more going to be more difficult but uh but one

00:56:22.780 of those things where the where the right attitude and the right constitution can can take you far

00:56:26.640 yeah morten radler did a similar experiment uh they recorded this a series of uh sessions that

00:56:35.620 did with inner city students, I think in like, I think it was probably the seventies or the eighties.

00:56:41.140 They had just a typical student come in, they put them on a bus and they brought, and he's kind of,

00:56:49.060 I don't know if the godfather is the right word, but he certainly helped popularize the great books

00:56:55.220 to people today. And Steve and I both, I'm sure owe him a great debt of gratitude for that.

00:57:02.340 that. But he did kind of what Steve was talking about. And perhaps not the program that we're

00:57:10.740 doing, but similar that they're reading these texts. You know, I guess people consider them

00:57:17.000 difficult texts, but source texts from history, serious stuff, good stuff. And they had not

00:57:23.020 been exposed to this at all before. The first week maybe found it a little bit, you know,

00:57:27.520 difficult but you can see that they've recorded this over the weeks that they're doing it just

00:57:33.840 the way that they're lighting up and they're talking about the works and these topics what

00:57:39.520 they had discussed in the classroom as they're going home on the bus and after the classroom

00:57:44.720 is done i don't know if people a lot of people know if they've been out of education for a while

00:57:50.240 what the typical high school experience looks like for students in alberta i'll give a slight

00:57:56.880 insight into that typically in a high school program students would read in a given year

00:58:06.560 like a play and two to three other books a lot of that engages with a critical theory first type

00:58:14.240 approach of analyzing and decomposing these texts and discussing them sometimes and writing papers

00:58:24.400 and these kinds of things, personal responses, et cetera, a lot of it aimed at diploma exam

00:58:29.900 preparation. But over the course of a given year, they're reading three to four books.

00:58:38.040 That's their exposure. And the type of book, you know, might be some of the, you know,

00:58:44.080 they'd read a play of Shakespeare as an example, Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, right? Maybe a more

00:58:50.600 modern book or two that's present i don't know what the the full set of curriculum i was talking

00:58:59.000 sorry uh with a principal of mine who had taught me in grade seven and grade eight so just before

00:59:04.720 i entered the program with steve she had taught me english at a school in calgary and i was talking

00:59:10.100 with her about a month ago and she was describing how her daughter was coming home and explaining

00:59:14.420 meaning that she was reading a book about a Black man who is incorrectly accused of violating

00:59:25.480 a girl and that there's a court case around it.

00:59:27.220 You probably would think, well, that's To Kill a Mockingbird.

00:59:30.720 But it wasn't.

00:59:31.720 It was some modern rendition that was literally far, far worse than that.

00:59:37.660 So all that to say, the amount of reading is not a ton.

00:59:42.240 The level of discussion, I would say, generally is not as deep.

00:59:47.060 And the type of analysis that is typically undergone from what I've seen within the classroom

00:59:52.960 experience for high schoolers and looking at the course of studies, and then just from

00:59:58.640 talking with families, is a lot of it is kind of a critical theory first approach and breaking

01:00:04.760 apart these texts.

01:00:06.280 If you were to compare, people can take a look at the full course load that we've got

01:00:10.540 for all four years of the program.

01:00:12.040 we start in grade nine or when the children are 14 if they're in high school or anybody can take

01:00:18.040 it at an older age but they're reading typically about 30 books a year so it's a little over 120

01:00:25.400 books over the course of the program and they're doing the two-hour discussion so i guess this is

01:00:30.840 kind of what is the program i'm explaining it now um so yeah about 30 books a year some of those are

01:00:38.600 long excerpts so we do the history of the peloponnesian war by thucydides in two weeks

01:00:44.280 but we don't read the entirety of it many of the books like the iliad and the odyssey would

01:00:48.600 read the entirety of those books but over the course between the plays so some shorter

01:00:54.520 texts we might read two to three plays in a week or these longer texts broken down

01:00:59.640 across multiple weeks or in a single week depending on the work it's about 30 30 works

01:01:05.320 over the course of the year and then if they're on the high school track they're doing the two

01:01:11.880 hour discussion they're writing a couple papers every term and then there's an oral examination

01:01:17.160 and then if they're on the college track beyond that they can get six university credits so

01:01:22.280 two uh college courses equivalent per semester so six per year so it's quite a bit you know when

01:01:29.080 they're in high school they can get just through this 48 university credits over the two over the

01:01:34.680 four years um i guess what the essays get longer steve i think and then they have responses that

01:01:43.000 they're writing but virtually everything else is the same well i'm missing anything the students

01:01:50.040 high school and college students college track students they're mixed in the classes

01:01:55.320 so the classes are the same the college students in addition to the two

01:02:00.520 essays per semester which are longer than the non-college track students write they also have

01:02:08.200 a weekly paper that they do which typically they have to write out responses to eight to

01:02:17.320 12 questions that they're given having to do with the text or text for that week so they do a lot

01:02:23.480 more writing yeah for sure but and john is this reading um in obviously it's it will be different

01:02:31.080 in the online versus the in in classroom programs but is this is there like a group component to

01:02:36.440 this or is this like personal reading time and then you're reflecting maybe at the end of a week

01:02:40.360 on yeah a great question yeah so uh the the reading is individual and then like so for

01:02:47.240 For instance, if we were going through the Odyssey that they would read this in our program

01:02:53.100 over two weeks.

01:02:54.380 So we'd have two classes devoted.

01:02:56.580 So the first 12 and then the second 12 books, if my memory serves, it's 24, I think overall.

01:03:03.320 They would do that reading individually.

01:03:07.580 We have a poem that they would read typically before the class, but we read at the beginning

01:03:13.360 of class as well.

01:03:15.480 And then that's a two hour discussion.

01:03:17.640 So we're talking and basically our job as moderators is to help fuel the conversation

01:03:23.020 with good questions.

01:03:24.600 And then over time, enable the students to carry on the conversation, especially over

01:03:28.840 the four years, more and more and more independently.

01:03:33.740 So we're enabling them to really be the Socratic questioners themselves and that we're guiding.

01:03:39.320 We're not doing a lecture.

01:03:40.540 We're not teaching the text.

01:03:44.280 Our job is to ask questions of the students and of their thoughts and to challenge their

01:03:50.620 thoughts from a variety of angles and to help them think through these different things.

01:03:56.060 And then also to just, you know, encounter this in a community together.

01:04:00.280 So in person, it's basically the online version, but we're meeting up, which I think a lot

01:04:04.900 of people are just very hungry for is a deep thirst for real community.

01:04:10.320 And this is one way on an intellectual level, like, you know, you can have meals together

01:04:15.180 and all these other things are all different ways to have community, but this kind of meeting

01:04:19.480 of minds and talking through these books on such an extended basis, you get to know each

01:04:24.060 other quite well.

01:04:26.220 And then you're able to have this shared reference, right?

01:04:31.040 You're able to read these books syntopically.

01:04:34.860 Syntopically, I guess that's what Murmur Adler uses as a term.

01:04:39.200 able to read and discuss not just a single text, but it in reference to all the other texts that

01:04:43.240 you've read in the program, and then talk about these large trends in history. And then just,

01:04:48.240 you know, what do different people say about, again, whatever topic is being brought up that

01:04:53.580 week with the questioning that's engaged in and the discussion. So that's kind of the way that

01:04:59.120 it's structured. Awesome. Right on. Well, James, I don't know, did you have, did you have any other

01:05:07.460 questions for our for our guests that maybe something we didn't touch on or uh or anything

01:05:12.820 to uh to add no i think we've covered uh quite a bit unless there is something uh and mike always

01:05:21.600 likes asking um like is there anything in this episode that you wished we would have asked

01:05:27.120 that we didn't like didn't already ask or cover yeah or any any shout outs that you'd like to

01:05:33.800 make as well please anyone else named like mortimer or some some cool name like like i would

01:05:40.760 expect somebody named mortimer to do something very important academically you know is there like

01:05:45.140 i don't know an ebenezer or something is

01:05:48.140 uh steve any shout outs well i i mean education is just such a big topic and

01:05:56.200 and uh you know coming uh while i was waiting to do the this uh podcast with you you two gentlemen

01:06:07.080 uh i was wondering well you know because i i looked at your program list and i saw that it was

01:06:14.300 you know primarily uh about what you got going on in alberta by the way i i think saint augustine

01:06:20.980 would approve of what you're doing as far as succession goes he thought smaller was better

01:06:27.080 yeah politically in that regard so uh so i i commend you for your work in that and i hope

01:06:34.760 really hope you have a great deal of success there but um i had no idea what really what

01:06:43.400 you'd ask i figured there'd be some questions about education so um i don't really have any

01:06:50.680 Nothing really comes to mind.

01:06:52.600 I say, gee, I wish James would ask me this.

01:06:55.280 Or I wish Mike would ask me this.

01:06:56.840 I might say one thing.

01:06:58.640 This is a little bit off the wall.

01:07:00.420 But before I got into this, I remember I told you Pat called.

01:07:04.940 And I decided to jump into it.

01:07:06.800 Well, at the time, I had a building business.

01:07:09.560 And my partner, you look like his twin, Mike.

01:07:17.320 Of course, he's much older now.

01:07:18.960 but when we were doing it yeah you look remarkably like him well hey that's you know i i often get

01:07:26.800 uh confused for you know a strong uh uh um contractor you know i have i have that uh that

01:07:35.200 look about me you know that i i build things yeah yeah you're building something with the

01:07:41.680 podcast hey you guys are doing well we're trying we're trying here you know like it's

01:07:45.040 just you know casually sort of wrap things up here like the reason we got into this in the first

01:07:51.460 place like yeah we have we have really been focused the last you know year and a half or so

01:07:55.400 like i say on on alberta independence just because it's a you know it's an issue that's close to home

01:07:59.540 for us and we um we we often describe ourselves actually as as uh reformed liberals you know we

01:08:06.600 we grew up in the city and we're you know we have we're both musicians like we went to school

01:08:11.540 together actually we've known each other since grade seven we played on the same volleyball team

01:08:15.520 cool and uh and you know we we have circles that are are very uh arts you know based and so in

01:08:22.400 those communities it is very it is still very uh liberal and very leftist and and we've sort of

01:08:28.340 found ourselves uh you know going through covid and and all the subsequent you know social disaster

01:08:35.600 that that came from that in the last few years um sort of on the outs you know of our of our social

01:08:40.580 circle circles and and just having these discussions and and educating ourselves on things that uh you

01:08:47.460 know even even just just a handful of years ago we may have found you know intellectually distasteful

01:08:52.500 or or completely out of bounds you know has really opened us up to to communities and getting to

01:08:58.100 speak with people like you guys that we we couldn't have imagined a couple years ago when we started

01:09:02.900 doing this so it's it's just very cool that these are sort of where our you know our our paths kind

01:09:08.100 of you know where the the timeline sort of split and yeah it's just cool to to have to see people

01:09:14.720 doing cool stuff like this in the in in this age you know we we live in such a time of um you know

01:09:21.540 everything is very bite-sized and consumable and and and throw away and and to have guys that are

01:09:27.260 really focused on rediscovering and reigniting that passion for for all the wisdom that that

01:09:34.240 has existed in in in the western canon and in in literature you know going back thousands of years

01:09:39.760 is is very cool so that's that's my little my little monologue i guess well i think it's a

01:09:45.900 great thing that you guys find so many things in life interesting i mean the world's a fascinating

01:09:52.760 place and you can get interested in almost anything if you start to look into it so yeah i

01:10:00.060 i think that makes you guys more normal than most people like one or two things

01:10:08.140 you got a lot more going that's great yeah we need more um what james what was the term you used in

01:10:15.340 in some discussions uh deep generalist deep generalists yeah i love that yeah yeah we need

01:10:21.180 fewer specialists and more deep generalists so hey this has been awesome guys i i i really appreciate

01:10:27.500 the uh um you know the the knowledge about your your program we're going to obviously shout out

01:10:32.320 all of your links um we're going to direct people your way anyone you know we have a lot of listeners

01:10:37.580 a lot of viewers in calgary so hopefully we get uh we get you some signups john maybe we get a

01:10:42.800 little kickback we can discuss that after the episode uh and uh thanks for sharing your knowledge

01:10:49.140 guys and and we'd love to maybe we maybe we revisit this in a year and see you know how the

01:10:53.460 first year of, of the program has, has gone in, in person and reconvene and, and, and chat about

01:10:59.660 more, uh, more books. And then by then you will have seen the Odyssey and we can discuss, uh,

01:11:04.960 it's, it's, uh, thematic, uh, merits versus the book. Yeah. Interesting. If people are in Calgary,

01:11:11.540 feel free to visit as well. You can come on to the bookstore we got here and, uh, it'd be good

01:11:15.240 to see folks. So that's awesome. And thanks guys for having us on. That's awesome. Yeah.

01:11:19.560 Nice to talk to you.

01:11:21.620 You too.

01:11:22.120 Thanks for joining.

01:11:22.580 Thank you very much, sir.

01:11:23.200 Okay, guys.

01:11:24.060 Have a good evening.

01:11:25.740 Cheers.

The Critical Compass Podcast - August 15, 2026

The Great Books Program ｜ John Serafini & Steve Bertucci

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