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With Sunday behind them, students on the New England High School Summer Program headed to their first Euclid class this morning with an eager mixture of excitement and a little wholesome anxiety. No proposition demonstrations this morning, though; just discussion of the definitions and preliminary principles of Euclid’s geometry. The classes began with questioning Euclid’s first definition of the point and evolved into conversation about the relation between the point and the line, moving from there to considering the self-evident nature of his common notions and postulates. 

After class let out, students dispersed until lunch. Some headed to the residence halls, some to Mass, and others down to St. Frassati Student Center to play pool or chat with friends. Over gyros at lunch, many of the prefects, programmers, and tutors revisited the classes’ discussions from earlier. These concepts are so new and unique to the students that questions reopened with just as much energy as earlier. Removing a subject as seemingly tangible as geometry from the physical world is an exceedingly difficult yet rewarding undertaking. After all, is the Euclidean point at its core simply “that which has no part?”

Thus engaged in their questions and conversations, all lingered at the tables right up until class, when students and tutors headed back to St. Gianna Molla Hall to discuss the first two books of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. This is one of the Summer Program’s more difficult readings! Sections talked over the story of Boethius meeting Lady Philosophy in prison and realizing that despair comes from losing sight of the truth, and that the greatest goods are not material or external because such things are changeable. Queries abounded, but with two more classes left in the week to ponder Boethius’s musings, students were satisfied to step away at the end of class and pursue answers later.

Programmers now head to recreation and the evening’s activities, including their further foray into Boethius and the first Euclidean demonstrations. Check the Summer Blog tomorrow morning to catch up!

More photos from the High School Summer Program

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