Paideia Problems and Possibilities, A Consideration of Questions Raised by the Paideia Proposal
by Mortimer J. Adler
The idea of Paideia schools was first broached in Mortimer Adler's book The Paideia Proposal, which made its appearance in 1982. On the whole, this little manifesto received a warm reception nationwide, and, encouraged by this, Adler went on a whirlwind tour promoting its ideas.
In response to that reception, and in order to answer the many questions that were raised concerning the nature and development of such schools, Adler brought out Paideia Problems and Possibilities in 1983.
At the very heart of Adler's proposal was the observation that the rote ingestion of facts, no matter how important, doesn't make for a well-educated individual. Moreover, this approach wholly neglects the acquisition of urgently needed skills in reasoning, as well as the development of true insight and the development of values.
Skills of this kind, he held, must be coached - not taught by lecture; and insight and the development of values can only come about in the course of active analysis and discussion of the sort found in great books and works of art. Yet skills coaching and engagement in this sort of analysis are nowhere encouraged in American schools.
Spelling out more concretely and in greater detail how schools of the desired kind might be created or transitioned to is the central objective of Paideia Problems and Possibilities.
What this book does not do is specify the details of a possible curriculum, which was the focus of a later book, The Paideia Program, An Educational Syllabus.
PP&P begins with a restatement of the objectives of Paideia schools, reinterates that rote learning cannot hope to satisfy these objectives, and moves on to a consideration of some of the questions that arise if schools of this kind are to be created or transitioned to. Some of the chief problems of implementation are then discussed.
These matters are followed up by making two proposals concerning how to begin educating in the desired manner in existing schools. (These are described as "entering wedges".)
The book closes with three appendices: the first includes a roster of various encounters between Adler and the media, as well as assorted conferences; the second provides some suggestions concerning implementation by Ruth Love, General Superintendent of Schools in the City of Chicago; and the last is a statement by Theodore R. Sizer, Headmaster of Phillips Academy, concerning the engagement of teachers with the process of implementing Paideia-driven changes, and some related observations.
A number of Paideia schools were, in fact, implemented in subsequent years, some of them spectacularly successful - but Reagan and a politically-motivated culture war had arrived, and saw the rise to influence of a cadre of profoundly ignorant individuals of exceptionally dubious motivation. Consequently, school transitioning lagged far behind what it should have been, with the result that the need for such schools is now more urgent than ever before. (The hyper-success in educational attainment of the Finns in similar schools underscores just how serious this failure has been.)
The questions raised and answered here by Adler are still very much relevant today - and still very much of interest to anyone interested in education - which is foundational to civilization and indeed even to human survival.
Representative quotations
Pg. 7
A hundred years ago, or even in the first decades of this [20th] century, a vast majority of those employed worked six or seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day; they began to work at a much earlier age and usually died before enjoying surcease from toil. It would have been folly then to regard their basic schooling as preparation for any form of self-development.
Lacking time in their lives for anything beyond toil and the things that kept them alive, they were denied the opportunity to make decent, human, civilized lives for themselves. They were drudges, stultified by their drudgery.
[Note: This is what "hard work" actually means, and though it may sometimes be necessary, there is nothing whatsoever admirable about it. It creates mindless, ant-like robots, not human beings.]
Pg. 8
. . . the theefold ends or objectives of basic schooling, as Paideia conceives them, should be the same for all. In ascending order of importance, they are: (2) preparation for earning a living; (2) preparation for the duties of citizenship n a democracy, in which the citizens are the ruling class and holders of public office; and (3) preparation for self-development, which cannot occur without continued learning and personal growth during maturity after all schooling, basic or advanced, has been completed.
Only the third of these objectives needs further comment. Is is needed because of the widely prevalent supposition that the education of a human being occurs in school and is completed there. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if schooling at all levels were of the highest degree of excellence imaginable, it would still be true that no one can become an educated human being during the years spent at school. That is simply because those are the years of everyone's immaturity. The immaturity that inevitably accompanies being young presents an insuperable obstance to becoming educated.
Pg. 9
. . .basic schooling thus directed will be an indispensable factor, though not the only factor, in bringing to full fruition the promises and benefits conferred upon a people by the institutions of political democracy. Its guarantees of liberty, equality, and justice for all, through the securing of their human rights, depend ultimately on the spread of intelligence, knowledge, judgment, and understanding. These qualities, which are potential in all human beings, are developed by proper schooling - schooling that informs and trains the mind.
Pg. 11
. . . each individual's right to a genuine opportunity for the pursuit of happiness requires schooling of a high quality. If we conceive this pursuit as an effort to make a good life for oneself - a life that is enriched by the possession of all the things that are really good for a human being to enjoy - it shoud be clear that the desire for such things and the power to attain them will remain dormant and undeveloped without the early guidance of good schooling.
