23 maio 1937 ano - St John's adopts the "New Program" under Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, with help from Adler and Van Doren

Descrição:

In part to survive loss of accreditation; this move is controversial from the start. Barr and Buchanan are more or less given carte blanche to try out the Virginia Plan that they had failed to make a go of at UVA, and a lot of the faculty stay on. From the beginning, everything was required of everyone (including faculty, though in practice some folks can't teach math/lab).

McClay: significant that it's s1937, a period of immense tension in the world, sensing something terrible was coming...again, a sense of moral incoherence in education was part of the problem. Their way forward was a reapproptiation of the tradition and reencounter. Transmision of what R. Kirk calls "the permanent things".

Walter Lippman (1938) on St. John's after its first year: "onset of barbarism" must be met by a "revival of learning" - it's happening at St John's.