Over a week ago I got to thinking, “Hey, I was going to go down to Cedar City to observe my son’s class at George Wythe College…whatever happened to that dream I had in August when I sent him off? I had better get in gear…the semester ends this month!”

The above video shows how much fun we had in class the day I observed. HA-HA, just kidding!!!!!! That is not the class I attended. See below for pictures and description. It was not action-packed but enlightening nevertheless.

I made some phone calls and started arranging the trip. I had several obstacles come up. I expressed discouragement to my husband that maybe the trip wouldn’t happen. He encouraged me and I persevered with more communication with people and was able to arrange the 4 hour one-way trip.

First off, I know that the institution is called George Wythe University by some but it is far from a university by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t know how it got upgraded from a college to a university when nothing changed about the size of the faculty or the number of degrees it offers. It only has one classroom, pictured below, and offers degrees in statesmanship, political economy, education, and constitutional law. See http://gw.edu

The classroom pictured below holds many memories for me. It was here that I got to hear Diann Jeppson and Rachel and Oliver DeMille speak about their book, The TJEd Home Companion. That seminar greatly affected me.  I also had my third Face to Face with Greatness Seminar in this classroom with Dr. DeMille and Shanon Brooks, one of the last, if not the last, that Dr. DeMille did.

So I got to observe my son’s class on Thursday morning, April 12. The topic for the day was Immaneul Kant and his classic philosophical work, Metaphysics of Morals.

I have been bugging my son all year to take photos of the class with his smartphone, or better yet videos, and send them to me. He refused.  Maybe it’s a maternal/female/1990s scrapbooking desire, but it just about killed me to know that he was off having these transformational lectures and discussions about the classics every day without me being there. I wanted to have some record of this amazing experience if I couldn’t be there all year. My parents certainly had no desire to observe my college classes.

The class was not as fun as the class featured in the video above, which happened several years ago. I remember showing that video to my son when he was about 13. It is hard to believe that he is now officially a GWC student.  The class only had 11 students, as some of them left at the semester change in the middle of the year. I think it’s cool that the class is small. It has that Anne of Green Gables chummy feel to it when she goes off to Redmond College with Gilbert. I always wanted that but at BYU I was a dot in a sea of thousands of faces. My son has had what I always wanted, a small group of college friends that socialize inside and outside of class.

I have been bugging him since the first day of class to send my photos from his smartphone of class or to record parts of it. I guess this is just a mom/female/1990s scrapbooking desire, of wanting a record of his exciting intellectual discussions and his first year of college life. I finally got to go do it myself.

These are some cool things I learned about Kant while observing:

-he believed that there were certain things that were sins against yourself, such as lying and gluttony

-he believed that there were certain punishments that nobody should have to suffer

-he posed the question, would it be right to push someone else off a cliff if that was the only way you could survive to stay on a cliff.

Dr. Schulties, the discussion leader, asked the students why Kant said that lying was a sin against the self and not others. None of the students said exactly what he was looking for. Some of them brought up examples of when they feel it is OK to lie, like Europeans protecting Jews from the Nazis by lying that they had them. He explained that it was because by lying you split yourself up. Dr. Schulties said that whenever you lie you pay a price.

The classroom has this ginormous map on the wall that is the biggest map I’ve ever seen.

The funniest part of the class was when somebody asked if it’s OK to lie to someone, like your wife, if she asks if she looks fat in a dress. Two of the students in the class are engaged to get married. The future husband (soon-to-be son-in-law of Oliver DeMille) posed the aforementioned question. His future wife looked at him and said, “What are you saying dude?” Everybody laughed.

Here is my son on the left waxing philosophical.

The class also talked about the sacredness of the human soul, and that that is why Kant said certain punishments should not be allowed. Some people mentioned some scriptures as well. I was impressed by the content of the class and can see that four years of this type of daily discussion would yield a beautiful education in the liberal arts.

I am so excited it is moving to Salt Lake City so more people, youth and parents, can take advantage of this mentored classroom education. Hey, I might even take advantage and go to some classes with it being only a half hour away in SLC!