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Paideia
Paideia Problems & Possibilities
Explains the impact of the Paideia proposal on American education and discusses special education, vocational training, curricula, and other key topics
- GenresEducationNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
1 person is currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Mortimer J. Adler
592 books1,049 followersNumerous published works of American educator and philosopher Mortimer Jerome Adler include
How to Read a Book
(1940) and
The Conditions of Philosophy
(1965).
This popular author worked with thought of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. He lived for the longest stretches in cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and own institute for philosophical research.
Born to Jewish immigrants, he dropped out school at 14 years of age in 1917 to a copy boy for the New York Sun with the ultimate aspiration to a journalist. Adler quickly returned to school to take writing classes at night and discovered the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and other men, whom he came to call heroes. He went to study at Columbia University and contributed to the student literary magazine, The Morningside, (a poem "Choice" in 1922 when Charles A. Wagner was editor-in-chief and Whittaker Chambers an associate editor). Though he failed to pass the required swimming test for a bachelor's degree (a matter that was rectified when Columbia gave him an honorary degree in 1983), he stayed at the university and eventually received an instructorship and finally a doctorate in psychology. While at Columbia University, Adler wrote his first book: Dialectic, published in 1927.
In 1930 Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, whom Adler had befriended some years earlier, arranged for Chicago’s law school to hire him as a professor of the philosophy of law; the philosophers at Chicago (who included James H. Tufts, E.A. Burtt, and George H. Mead) had "entertained grave doubts as to Mr. Adler's competence in the field [of philosophy]" and resisted Adler's appointment to the University's Department of Philosophy. Adler was the first "non-lawyer" to join the law school faculty. Adler also taught philosophy to business executives at the Aspen Institute.
Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. As the director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of Britannica from 1965, he was instrumental in the major reorganization of knowledge embodied in that edition. He introduced the Paideia Proposal which resulted in his founding the Paideia Program, a grade-school curriculum centered around guided reading and discussion of difficult works (as judged for each grade). With Max Weismann, he founded The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas.
Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses, and some of his works (such as How to Read a Book) became popular bestsellers. He was also an advocate of economic democracy and wrote an influential preface to Louis Kelso's The Capitalist Manifesto. Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days. In his own words:
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write—and they do.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer...
This popular author worked with thought of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. He lived for the longest stretches in cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and own institute for philosophical research.
Born to Jewish immigrants, he dropped out school at 14 years of age in 1917 to a copy boy for the New York Sun with the ultimate aspiration to a journalist. Adler quickly returned to school to take writing classes at night and discovered the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and other men, whom he came to call heroes. He went to study at Columbia University and contributed to the student literary magazine, The Morningside, (a poem "Choice" in 1922 when Charles A. Wagner was editor-in-chief and Whittaker Chambers an associate editor). Though he failed to pass the required swimming test for a bachelor's degree (a matter that was rectified when Columbia gave him an honorary degree in 1983), he stayed at the university and eventually received an instructorship and finally a doctorate in psychology. While at Columbia University, Adler wrote his first book: Dialectic, published in 1927.
In 1930 Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, whom Adler had befriended some years earlier, arranged for Chicago’s law school to hire him as a professor of the philosophy of law; the philosophers at Chicago (who included James H. Tufts, E.A. Burtt, and George H. Mead) had "entertained grave doubts as to Mr. Adler's competence in the field [of philosophy]" and resisted Adler's appointment to the University's Department of Philosophy. Adler was the first "non-lawyer" to join the law school faculty. Adler also taught philosophy to business executives at the Aspen Institute.
Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. As the director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of Britannica from 1965, he was instrumental in the major reorganization of knowledge embodied in that edition. He introduced the Paideia Proposal which resulted in his founding the Paideia Program, a grade-school curriculum centered around guided reading and discussion of difficult works (as judged for each grade). With Max Weismann, he founded The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas.
Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses, and some of his works (such as How to Read a Book) became popular bestsellers. He was also an advocate of economic democracy and wrote an influential preface to Louis Kelso's The Capitalist Manifesto. Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days. In his own words:
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write—and they do.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 20, 2020
The second book in the Paideia Trilogy, this book aims at clearing up some of the fundamental questions brought into the conversation in the wake of the Proposal itself. Adler is quick to announce that the book will not discuss objections to the proposal, but simply the questions that it inspired in those favorable to its implementation. This is because the members of the Paideia Group were not attempting to convince naysayers; they were wanting to change the face of public education before the dawn of the new millennium: and to do this they needed to facilitate change and immediate implementation. So, this book, Problems and Possibilities is the group's addressing questions about the proposal itself and about its implementation.
The book is beautifully Adlerian in its organization. The first part lays out the proposal in brief (though why someone would have picked up this book without having read the former is beyond me), with its central tenets, beliefs, and goals, and then moves into a brief description of the prescribed means of the proposal. It quickly moves on, for the bulk of the book, to the answering of questions. These questions reference the Proposal's curricular framework, its applicability to students, what it entails for teachers and teaching, and, finally, its effects on organization, administration, and financing. In short, it is a thoroughly practical book, whereas the first was largely theoretical. This book is about doing and the achieving of goals. The last few chapters talk about problems of implementation, a few ways that a school might begin the process, and the possibilities that the program provides. Three appendices end the book, mostly from superintendents of schools that were working to the program's implementation. In short, they provide the on-the-ground work being done to achieve the Paideia aims.
I wouldn't read the book for fascination's sake, or for the benefit of philosophical speculation. As was said, it is a thoroughly practical book, and much of the text deals in simple clarifications of the program. So while it is not as important as the first and third books, it does a great deal for schools and districts hoping to change how they educate students.
There was quite a bit of guff about the purported "elitism" of the proposal, so I'll leave you with part of Adler's response to that charge:
"The elitist, explicitly or implicitly, views the human race as divided into two classes - the educable and the non-educable (equivalent to Aristotle's freemen by nature and slaves by nature). If the elitist had the courage of his convictions, he would recommend the abandonment of universal suffrage and, with it, a retreat from our democratic institutions.
How, then, are we to understand the perversity of the question whether our proposal is elitist? Only in this way: where the word 'elitist' is used to mean a concern with excellence, then the Paideia program - a program designed to provide a high quality of schooling - can be labelled 'elitist,' but only when it is also understood that its 'elitism' is applicable to all, not just a privileged few. It is concerned with excellence as a democratic goal. The word 'elitist' thus amounts to no more than name-calling."
The book is beautifully Adlerian in its organization. The first part lays out the proposal in brief (though why someone would have picked up this book without having read the former is beyond me), with its central tenets, beliefs, and goals, and then moves into a brief description of the prescribed means of the proposal. It quickly moves on, for the bulk of the book, to the answering of questions. These questions reference the Proposal's curricular framework, its applicability to students, what it entails for teachers and teaching, and, finally, its effects on organization, administration, and financing. In short, it is a thoroughly practical book, whereas the first was largely theoretical. This book is about doing and the achieving of goals. The last few chapters talk about problems of implementation, a few ways that a school might begin the process, and the possibilities that the program provides. Three appendices end the book, mostly from superintendents of schools that were working to the program's implementation. In short, they provide the on-the-ground work being done to achieve the Paideia aims.
I wouldn't read the book for fascination's sake, or for the benefit of philosophical speculation. As was said, it is a thoroughly practical book, and much of the text deals in simple clarifications of the program. So while it is not as important as the first and third books, it does a great deal for schools and districts hoping to change how they educate students.
There was quite a bit of guff about the purported "elitism" of the proposal, so I'll leave you with part of Adler's response to that charge:
"The elitist, explicitly or implicitly, views the human race as divided into two classes - the educable and the non-educable (equivalent to Aristotle's freemen by nature and slaves by nature). If the elitist had the courage of his convictions, he would recommend the abandonment of universal suffrage and, with it, a retreat from our democratic institutions.
How, then, are we to understand the perversity of the question whether our proposal is elitist? Only in this way: where the word 'elitist' is used to mean a concern with excellence, then the Paideia program - a program designed to provide a high quality of schooling - can be labelled 'elitist,' but only when it is also understood that its 'elitism' is applicable to all, not just a privileged few. It is concerned with excellence as a democratic goal. The word 'elitist' thus amounts to no more than name-calling."
February 5, 2011
On the heels of learning of the Paideia Program, I sought more information. I picked this up to supplement my learning.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews