A few years ago, heeding our principles, I decided to develop a concrete curriculum for a potential four-year undergraduate program. The main elements in this program were an interlocking study of history, government and economics, with the idea of forming a foundation of “statesmanship.” To this was added a survey of notable works of Western Civilization, primarily via the Harvard Classics as I described earlier. The Harvard Classics were (I think) specifically aimed at an undergraduate reader, and contain a significant component of what might be called “moral education.” Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization satisfies all these goals, as it is an integrated history of government, politics, literature, culture and civilization.
These principles quickly fill out a four-year reading list. Here, we are naturally inclined toward a defined, scheduled curriculum, rather than letting the Student pursue his own interests in a somewhat self-scheduled manner. In practice, we would wish the Teacher to guide the Student toward making materials such as this part of his self-guided education anyway, with the main difference perhaps that the Student might be able to change the timing somewhat to suit his interests. For example, after reading Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises, some Students might be eager to follow up with The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich Hayek, as they are in a mood to concentrate on this issue for now. Another Student, after finishing up a thousand pages of somewhat turgid Germanic text about economics, might be in the mood to turn to Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni for a change. However, we would then lose the advantages that come from Students studying something together, especially the opportunity to discuss it as they are reading. So, I opted for a more scheduled, programmatic approach.
Nevertheless, I intended to leave some room for personal choices. Whether a Student would have time for such things, in the middle of a reading list that is quite demanding as it is, is for now an open question. I left, for example, nearly the entirety of literature in the form of novels for open reading.
Today, I would add an element of the visual and performing arts. Music, dance (ballet, primarily), opera, painting, sculpture and architecture. This is best done as a sort of enjoyment, using the forms of leisure rather than study, but approached in a systematic way. For example, we could devote one evening a week to listening to music, or watching videos (via DVD for example) of operas and ballets. I think it would be worthwhile to conduct a yearlong (thirty weeks) systematic review of opera, culminating in the four-opera Wagner Ring series.
My readings for Government are somewhat weak, as I don’t have as much knowledge of good materials in that field as I would like.
My approach to Economics, which I know something about, is to review a course of major works in the Classical (Smith, Ricardo, Mill) tradition, proceeding to the Austrian and then the Supply Side branches. At the end, we read some basic textbooks, which I thought would be interesting not only to provide a mainstream contemporary explication and fill in any gaps, but also to see if we could approach them with an informed, critical eye — to be able to say what is wrong with them.
I also included some element of business and investing (now our reading list is becoming very full!), as this is an inherent part of economics and a necessary foundation for successful Statesmanship — that is, government policy. It also serves as a tie to the practical world of business that Students are likely to participate in after graduation. Nevertheless, although this has a vocational element, it also has a valuable “general education” element. This gets a little serious in the last year, where I stuck in a full study program for the CFA Level 1 exam, which is basic business-school stuff that I think would be valuable knowledge for anyone in any practical task, and also, a worthwhile supplementary study of economics. It would enable our Students to begin their new careers, if not quite at a running start, at least at a walking pace. Just as certain technical aspects of Math and Science should be studied by all Students as part of their Liberal Arts education (this is mostly done in high school), so too some technical aspects of business can be part of the general Liberal Arts foundation.
With so many ambitions already, much had to be left out. There are no foreign languages, or math and science. These can be studied by the Student by their own means. One reason for the inclusion of the CFA Exam study was to introduce the element of numerical manipulation and rational calculation, skills also found in math and science, and which are somewhat scarce in a program otherwise devoted to words.
I adopted the standard four year, September-June pattern. Some (like Thales College) have opted for a full-time, three-year pattern. Others have gone for a March-December school year, taking advantage of the summer. I thought that the three summers inherent in the program would provide an opportunity for internships (many of which are timed for the regular college year), and also perhaps, projects that could make good use of a big block of time, such as foreign travel. Also, the 22 weeks per year of open time gives some opportunity for Students to do some reading on their own of things that strike their personal fancy.
There is a lot here, especially if the Student adds a few more items of their own choice. The study effort required would be significantly greater than is common in universities today. Basically, it would be 8-10 hours per day, Monday through Friday — similar to the world of work, which they might as well get used to. Students would still have the weekends to enjoy, or use to catch up on their studies. The three weeks between terms, and the summer break, are certainly enough time off to recuperate from a demanding schedule.
That is probably enough preamble, so here is my four-year curriculum:
Year 1
Term 1:
The main goal of this initial term is to acclimate the student to self-directed, self-motivated study; to learn to be guided by a personal love of learning, rather than the carrot-and-stick structure of coercive methods. Study hours rise from 2-3 hours per day to 6-8 hours. Students are largely allowed to follow their own interests in study, guided toward high-quality and rewarding materials by the mentor. The student may read items scheduled later in the curriculum; other recommended items in Economics and History; or entirely different subjects such as anthropology, psychology, environmental issues, classic novels, physics or law. Required items are limited to:
Civilisation, thirteen-part BBC documentary narrated by Kenneth Clark
A Cartoon History of the Universe, by Larry Golnick
The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom
A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver DeMille
Phases of Learning, by Oliver and Rachael DeMille
Term 2:
Harvard Classics vols 1-10:
Volume 1:
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin
The Journal of John Woolman, by John Woolman
Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn
Volume 2:
The Apology, Phaedo, and Crito, by Plato
The Golden Sayings, by Epictetus
The Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
Volume 3:
Essays, Civil and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon
Areopagita and Tractate on Education, by John Milton
Religio Medici, by Thomas Browne
Volume 4: The complete poems in English, by John Milton
Volume 5: Essays, and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Volume 6: Poems and songs, by Robert Burns
Volume 7:
The Confessions, by Saint Augustine
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis
Volume 8: Greek Drama
Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Furies, and Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus
Oedipus the King and Antigone, by Sophocles
Hippolytus and The Bacchae, by Euripides
The Frogs, by Aristophanes
Volume 9:
On Friendship, On Old Age, and letters, by Cicero
letters, by Pliny the Younger
Volume 10: The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
A History of the World, by J.M. Roberts
The Way the World Works, by Jude Wanniski
Gold: the Once and Future Money, by Nathan Lewis
The Libertarian Mind, by David Boaz
The Libertarian Reader, by David Boaz
(optional) History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thyucidides
Individual study.
Term 3:
Harvard Classics, vols. 11-20.
Volume 11: The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
Volume 12: The Lives, by Plutarch
Volume 13: Aeneid, by Virgil
Volume 14: Don Quixote, part 1, by Cervantes
Volume 15:
The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
Volume 16: stories from the Thousand and One Nights
Volume 17: Folklore and Fable
fables by Aesop
Children’s and Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
Volume 18: Modern English Drama
All for Love, by John Dryden
The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith
The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Blot in the ‘Scutchen, by Robert Browning
Manfred, by Lord Byron
Volume 19:
Faust, part 1, Egmont, and Hermann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
Volume 20: The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
The Fatal Conceit, by Friedrich Hayek
Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt
Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond
Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, by David Ricardo
The 5000-Year Leap, by W. Cleon Skousen
A Patriot’s History of the United States, by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen
Individual study.
Year 2
Term 1:
Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises
Gold: the Monetary Polaris, by Nathan Lewis
The Story of Civilization, Volume 1: Our Oriental Heritage, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 2: the Life of Greece, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 3: Caesar and Christ, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 4: The Age of Faith, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
The Second Treatise on Government, by John Locke
Ethics, by Aristotle
Politics, by Aristotle
Harvard Classics vol. 40: English Poetry #1, Chaucer to Gray (spread throughout the year)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith (optional)
The Histories, by Herodotus (optional)
Individual study.
Term 2:
We continue with the Harvard Classics, vols 21-30.
Volume 21: I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
Volume 22: The Odyssey, by Homer
Volume 23: Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Volume 24: On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, and A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
Volume 25:
Autobiography and On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, and Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
Volume 26: Continental Drama
Life Is a Dream, by Pedro Calderon de la Blanca
Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille
Phedre, by Jean Racine
Tartuffe, by Moliere
Minna von Barnheim, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
William Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
Volume 27: English Essays, Sidney to Macaulay
Volume 28: Essays, English and American
Volume 29: Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
Volume 30: Scientific Papers
The Forces of Matter and The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
On the Conservation of Force and Ice and Glaciers, by Hermann von Helmholtz
The Wave Theory of Light and The Tides, by Lord Kelvin
The Extent of the Universe, by Simon Newcomb
Geographical Evolution, by Sir Archibald Geikie
The Story of Civilization, Volume 5: The Renaissance, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 6: The Reformation, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 7: The Age of Reason Begins, by Will and Ariel Durant
Individual study.
Term 3:
The Story of Civilization, Volume 8: The Age of Louis XIV, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 9: The Age of Voltaire, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 10: Rousseau and Revolution, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Story of Civilization, Volume 11: The Age of Napoleon, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Republic and The Laws, by Marcus Tullus Cicero
For Good and Evil: the Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, by Charles Adams
Principles of Political Economy, by John Stuart Mill
The Magic Formula, by Nathan Lewis
The Seven Fat Years, by Robert Bartley
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles Mann
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles Mann
Individual study.
Year 3
Term 1:
Harvard Classics vol. 41: English Poetry #2, Collins to Fitzgerald (spread throughout the year).
Harvard Classics vol. 44: Sacred Writings I
Analects of Confucius
Hebrew: Job, Psalms and Ecclesiastes
Christian 1: Luke and Acts
Harvard Classics, vol. 45: Sacred Writings II
Christian 2: Corinthians I and II, and hymns
Buddhist: Writings
Hindu: the Bhagavad-Gita
Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis
What the Buddha Taught, by Walpola Ruhala
The Dhammapada, by the Buddha
Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
On War, by Carl von Clausewitz
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet
The Penguin History of Latin America, by Edwin Williamson
Gold: the Final Standard, by Nathan Lewis
The Art of the Deal, by Donald Trump
Am I Being Too Subtle? Straight Talk From a Business Mogul, by Sam Zell
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin LeFevre
a course on statistics
a course on accounting
Financial Statement Analysis, by Martin Fridson
Term 2:
Harvard Classics, vols. 31-40
Volume 31: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Volume 32: Literary and Philosophical Essays
Essays, by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Montaigne and What Is a Classic? by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The Poetry of the Celtic Races, by Ernest Renan
The Education of the Human Race, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Letters Upon an Aesthetic Education of Man, by Friedrich von Schiller
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
Byron and Goethe, by Giuseppe Manzoni
Volume 33: Voyages and Travels
An account of Egypt from The Histories, by Herodotus
Germany, from Tacitus
Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
Sir Francis Drake’s Famous Voyage Round the World, by Francis Petty
Drake’s Great Armada, by Captain Walter Bigges
Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voyage to Newfoundland, by Edward Haies
The Discovery of Guiana, by Sir Walter Raleigh
Volume 34:
Discourse on Method, by Rene Descartes
Letters on the English, by Voltaire
On the Inequality Among Mankind and Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Volume 35:
Chronicles, by Jean Froissart
The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory
A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
Volume 36:
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
The Ninety-Five Theses, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, and On the Freedom of a Christian, by Martin Luther
Volume 37:
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, by John Locke
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, by George Berkeley
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
Volume 38:
The Oath of Hippocrates
Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Pare
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey
The Three Original Publications on Vaccinations Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister
Scientific papers, by Louis Pasteur
Scientific papers, by Charles Lyell
Volume 39: Prefaces and Prologues
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
The Real George Washington, by Jay Parry
The Making of America, by W. Cleon Skousen
The Flat Tax Revolution: Using A Postcard to Abolish the IRS, by Steve Forbes
Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy, and What We Can Do About It, by Steve Forbes
Term 3:
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx
Witness, by Whittaker Chambers
The Naked Communist, by W. Cleon Skousen
Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War, by Bevin Alexander
The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe
a course in logic and rhetoric
The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers
Democracy in America, by Alexis de Toqueville
The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham
The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash that Cured Itself, by James Grant
JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity, by Brian Domitrovic and Lawrence Kudlow
The First World War, by John Keegan
The Real Thomas Jefferson, by Andrew Allison
The Real Benjamin Franklin, by Andrew Allison
Individual study.
Year 4
Term 1:
Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki
Cashflow Quadrant, by Robert Kiyosaki
The Alchemy of Finance, by George Soros
Econoclasts, by Brian Domitrovic
Study in preparation for the CFA exam Level 1
Winning, by Jack Welch
Sam Walton: Made In America, by Sam Walton and John Huey
The Tempting of America, by Robert Bork
Our Lost Constitution, by Mike Lee
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins
Bailout Nation, by Barry Ritholz
The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure, by John Allison
The Harvard Classics, vol. 42: English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman (throughout the year)
Principles of Economics, by Greg Mankiw
Individual study.
Term 2:
The Harvard Classics, vol. 46-49
Volume 46: Elizabethan Drama I
Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe
Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Volume 47: Elizabethan Drama II
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, by Thomas Dekker
The Alchemist, by Ben Johnson
Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher
The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
Volume 48: Thoughts, letters and minor works, by Blaise Pascal
Volume 49: Epic and Saga
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel
The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
Study in preparation for the CFA exam Level 1
The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure, by John Allison
The Origins of the Second World War, by AJP Taylor
The Rise and Decline of the State, by Martin van Creveld
Macroeconomics, by Paul Krugman
Individual study.
Term 3:
Study in preparation for the CFA exam Level 1
Senior Thesis
The Forgotten Man: a New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes
Microeconomics, by R. Glenn Hubbard
Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor, by Seth Klarman
Pioneering Portfolio Management, by David Swensen
Jimmy Stewart is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited-Purpose Banking, by Laurence Kotlikoff
Individual study
