Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Great Books, Santa Fe

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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. It was apparently merged. dbenbenn | talk 19:40, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

List of Great Books, Santa Fe[edit]

I don't see how this is useful/notable...it's just a curriculum for a class at some college. Adam Bishop 02:52, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. Evil Monkey∴Hello 02:53, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. If you'd followed the links, you'd know that this is not merely part of a class curriculum, but is part of St. John's College, Santa Fe's Great Books Program. Certainly as notable as say, a TV show episode list. --Calton 04:06, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Nonsense. Are we going to list every college's curricula? This is not encyclopedic. Delete. RickK 06:19, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
    • Um, more than just some college's curriculum. Click on either St. John's College, Santa Fe or Great Books and see. Maybe you'll decide it's still not noteworthy, but at least don't mischaracterize it. --Calton 10:55, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I vote delete too --nixie 07:09, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. ComCat.
  • Delete Non-notable. JimmyShelter 09:29, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete not really much more notable than the summer reading lists given out at every middle and high school in the universe. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:09, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. It is more notable than the summer reading lists given out at every middle and high school in the country, because it is the entire curriculum of a well-known four-year baccalaureate program at more than one university. -- Dominus 20:05, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Agree with Andrew Starblind Lenahan. --Neigel von Teighen 14:12, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, WP not a reading or webguide, this is not an article. Wyss 20:12, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge (and then delete, with proper history notes in Talk for GFDL Dpbsmith 10:45, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)) Significant educational philosophy and the list of books actually used is a valuable datum. Assuming the list is the same as that used at St. John's College, Annapolis, merge there, as it is the original campus. The use of direct source texts of the "great books" is a fairly interesting educational philosophy. Notice that this is not just a recommended reading list, these are (supposedly) the books used as the textbooks. I don't think there are many colleges other than St. Johns that do this, so it is a notable curriculum, not just any old typical liberal arts curriculum. It might be worthwhile to try to coordinate and refactor the articles on the Harvard Classics, Great Books, Great Books of the Western World, the two St. John's College articles, the St. John's book list, and, I dunno, maybe Stringfellow Barr, Mortimer Snerd (sorry, couldn't resist), Charles W. Eliot, Robert Hutchins, etc. since these all bear on the same idea. I've always wondered how the teaching at St. John's is actually done; I'll bet the professors have developed elaborate methods of subtle cheating to insure that students don't end up believing that combustion is caused by phlogiston and that light waves are caused by vibrations in the aether. Maybe the Great Books are the only official texts but the students smuggle in current textbooks and hide them inside copies of Playboy so they won't get caught? Maybe the upperclassmen trade lists of the books you really need to read in order to ace the tests? Just wondering... Seriously, this list is a keeper, but not as a separate article. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
P. S. I just learned something new from Wikipedia. This educational philosophy is known as Educational perennialism in general, and secular perennialism in particular. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:35, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
P. P. S. Sufferin' succotash! Four whole years of nothing but dead white European males... no, if you stick it out for three years you do get W. E. B. Dubois and Virginia Woolf in your senior year. By the time you graduate, you probably think Allan Bloom is a radical. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:56, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
No, wait, you get Jane Austen in your junior year. Sheesh. RickK 23:28, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
^{Above comment aimed at the curriculum, not Dpbsmith). RickK 23:28, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I am sorry to say that I still don't "get" Jane Austen. Maybe when I grow up... Dpbsmith (talk) 11:50, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. For once, it is a coherent list that illustrates the notable and unusual curriculum of a college. I'd comment, by the way, that at a lot of the more demanding colleges the humanities undergraduates will read a substantial percentage of these books in their entirety and even more of them in part. Plus, they will read a great deal more besides. Depending on how much depth they go into, if this is the entire 4 year reading list, it seems a bit light. --BM 23:54, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, there have been far less notable, trivial lists that have been kept on Wikipedia. Perhaps the article could de with a bit more explaining on why those books are chosen. Megan1967 00:50, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - a book list is totally useless and does not convey anything. If this curriculum is important or unique than it should be written and expalined in the article. Otherwise it would open the floodgates for people putting down curriculum lists in wikipedia for the thousands of courses. kaal 01:25, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • So, what would you think about "merge into St. John's College, Annapolis and delete?" The article(s) on St. John's do "explain the curriculum." BTW, I've done a bit of Googling on "perennialism" in various combinations, and so far St. John's is frequently mentioned as an example of a college using that philosophy, and I have yet to see a mention of any other college using such a philosophy or curriculum, so St. John's curriculum is notable as one of the few actual examples of such a curriculum in actual use. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:45, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: If there's agreement (which there currently isn't), I'm prepared to do the kind of merge-and-delete that merges histories, keeping things GFDL-kosher. I was thinking of just doing the merge right away, but the history shows contributions by too many editors to just put a simple note on the Talk page. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:34, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Copyvio? The article was contributed in almost its present form by User:Desert Pyrate on 28 October. Three edits to this article are his only contributions. The article is essentially the same text as this list from the St. John's website. Since then, there have been scores of edits by several editors, but virtually all of the edits consist of linking or fixing links in the names of the works and their authors. Since I want to keep the list, I'd like to think that there isn't a copyvio, but I dunno. An anthology of public domain work certainly can have a compilation copyright, but is its table of contents copyrightable? Is this just a list of names like a telephone directory, or does the creative act of selecting them make it copyrightable? Could St. John's sue me successfully if I were to start my own college and use their booklist as the curriculum? I'm probably losing the argument to keep this information anyway so it probably doesn't matter, but... whom to ask? Dpbsmith (talk) 13:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • As far as I know, the folks at St. Johns would almost certainly ne more happy than not if others copied their curriculum. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep .. although I think it should be merged with the Annapolis campus book list. St.Johns is a very unique school, and this list is very helpful for those wishing to study the Great Books. If you have never heard of St.Johns or the great books program I could understand why it might seem non noteworthy. In any case if this does get deleted, please let me know first so I can copy this down somewhere for my own personal reference! --Stbalbach 22:52, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The list is available on the St. John's website at http://www.sjcsf.edu/asp/main.aspx?page=1302 . Dpbsmith (talk) 23:47, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I concur with Stbalbach, though I wouldn't object to a merge. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. The list is more notable than it may appear. I'm not sure about the "Santa Fe" in the name: it seems "Annapolis" or "St. John's" would be more appropriate. So maybe move. LizardWizard 08:00, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • KEEP:It's well written enough, intresting, St. John's seems notable, unusual, --The_stuart 16:34, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Not notable in any possible way. What this boils down to is a list of books that in the opinion of this college are the most important in western literature. In that sense, one could even argue that the article is inherently POV, though I admit that could be stretching it. Indrian 20:24, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • No, it's not inherently POV to report that "X said Q" or that "Group Y believes J" or "Institution Z holds core principles K," and such statements are encyclopedic if X, Y, or Z are important and notable. The issue is really whether St. Johns and/or its curriculum is a) notable, and b) notable enough to be worth including this level of specific detail. I think they are, since this is all part of the Great Books movement, and which books are considered "great" is important in understanding the movement. The article on the Harvard Classics lists the actual contents of the volumes, and that makes it a better article than it would be without the list. Great Books and Educational perennialism are significant, and St. John's is notable as a reasonably well-known, successful, well-regarded institution that actually puts these ideas into practice. I don't think the detailed curriculum of any old "good small liberal-arts school" like Haverford College or Reed College would be notable, and I don't think St. John's would be notable if there were a hundred schools that followed the same curriculum—but there aren't. (I've recently learned of two more: Thomas Aquinas College, http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/, in Santa Paula, California, and Gutenberg College in Eugene, Oregon, which are respectively Catholic and Protestant Christian schools with a Great Books curriculum). By the way, I think it's clear from my flippant remarks above that I am not personally thrilled by the Great Books idea; it's not my POV. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:27, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. or merge. St John's and the Great Books movement are a significant, although non-mainstrean, educational philosophy. Probably this should be merged into the main article on the origianl St John's, or else one on the Great Books movement as a whole.
  • Keep unless the list is available on a web site to which Great Books could link. It's clearly neither just a college curriculum nor restrricted to one college (as a glance at the Great Books article confirms). The fact that some users disagree with what's on the list (as in certain respects do I) is irrelevant to the VfD debate. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:33, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge with Annapolis campus article and redirect. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 17:02, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand; why do you think that this should be done? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:28, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Notable list developed at University of Chicago many years ago. Unique curriculum that is well-known as well-respected. A list of the books is a useful reference (one I have actually looked for). -- Decumanus 19:53, 2005 Feb 12 (UTC)

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