The Paideia Program, An Educational Syllabus
by The Paideia Group and Mortimer J. Adler
The case for Paideia schools was first made in Mortimer Adler's book The Paideia Proposal, which was published in 1982. 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 subsequently brought out Paideia Problems and Possibilities in 1983.
These two books were then followed, in 1984, by The Paideia Program.
At the very heart of Adler's educational manifesto was the observation that the rote ingestion of facts, no matter how important, cannot 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 noted, must be coached - not taught by lecture; and in-depth insight and the development of values can only come about in the course of active analysis and discussion of the sort of issues raised in great books and works of art. Yet skills coaching and engagement in this sort of analysis were, and mostly still are, little encouraged in American schools.
But Adler and The Paideia Group didn't have much to say about how this new sort of teaching was actually to be done, and they were entirely silent concerning the actual content to be taught. The Paideia Program goes some way towards satisfying those omissions, though at the same time is careful to emphasize that the book wasn't intended to lay down stringent rules, and that local conditions would call for local modifications.
The first three chapters deal with the question of why different methods of teaching are needed for each of the three different aspects of educating. The next 10 essays flesh out in greater detail how the teaching of each key subject area will differ from the approach current in public schools.
These essays are quite uneven in quality, and to some degree are even inconsistent among themselves; nevertheless, teachers (and parents) will find most of them almost as valuable now as when they were written. Taken as a whole, they represent a quantum leap over the teaching of subject-matter now prevalent.
There are, unfortunately, some significant background omissions. Perhaps the worst of these (though recognized to some extent) is an over-arching ideal of human character, which each of the subjects should do something to help develop. (This kind of ideal may, however, be found to some degree in Brand Blanshard's book The Uses of a Liberal Education.)
The second, forgivable, because environmental awareness has developed greatly since the 1980s, is the absence of any sort of material pertaining to ecoliteracy.
The third omission is the failure to address the need to develop a consistent sense of the relationships existing among all areas of knowlege, and therefore also of education. Students must be helped toward this sort of understanding by explicit discussions of these relationships at the beginning of each course, and also by provision of some sort of diagram illustrating these relationships at a high level - a kind of "pantology" of knowlege. In this way, the student always has a "you are here" orientation toward the whole of the education being provided. This should help in developing a larger context for learning.
Similarly, a glaring omission, and opportunity for improvement, would be provision of a sort of guiding rationale for education of the sort found in good games. For example, one "rationale" might be that the student is preparing for being marooned on a desert island, or preparing for an attempt to colonize the moon or Mars. Then the content of all of the math and science classes, for example, could be oriented toward achieving this "goal" so that the inter-relationship of all the problems in all classes could be understood, and as much as possible would provide a context for all of the learning taking place. Placed in perspective in this way, each of the elements of education has a peg to hang from.
Representative quotations
Pg. 6 - 7
The Paideia Program seeks to establish a course of study that is general, not specialized; liberal, not vocational; humanistic, not technical. Only in this way can it fulfill the meanng of the words "paideia" and "humanitas," which signify the general learning that should be in the possession of every human being. . . .
Individual differences involving inequalities in native endowment and inequalities in nurtural or environmental backgrounds call for compensatory efforts to give some children who need it pre-school preparation and, later, in the course of school years, supplementary instruction to those who need it.
A Paideia school must have a principal who is truly the principal teacher in that school, who works with the teaching staff and is their educational leader, not just the school's chief administrative officer.
Pg. 7
We are here concerned with the what, the why, and the how of the Paideia Program: what is to be learned, why it is to be learned, and how it is to be learned with the help of teachers. The effort entails a radical reform - the restructuring of schools, the allocating of their funds and their facilities, the reorganization of their schedules and their personnel.
What is to be learned falls under three categories: (1) kinds of knowledge to be acquired; (2) skills to be developed; and (3) understanding or insights to be achieved. We are also concerned with why it is to be learned, the reason in each case being the way it serves the three objectives of basic schooling - earning a living, being a good citizen, and living a full life.
How teachers can help their students learn what is to be learned comprises three different methods of instruction: (1) didactic teaching bylectures or through textbook assignments; (2) coaching that forms the habits through which all skills are possessed; and (3) Socratic teaching by questioning and by conducting discussions of the answers elicited.
The second kind of learning, aided by coaching, is more important than the first, because well-formed habits of skilled performance are more desirable than the verbal memories produced by didactic instruction - the kind that enable students to pass examinations in various subject matters. The third kind of learning - understanding enlarged by Socratic questioning in seminar discussions - is even more durable.
Pg. 18
The primary goal of Socratic teaching, whether in a formal seminar or not, is to bring out and then clarify the ideas and issues that are raised by something that has been read or otherwise experienced jointly by the leader and the students. A secondary goal of such teaching is to make clear the book or work of art itself. . . .
The ideas and issues raised by good boooks are more parmanent and more interesting than those that are raised by inferior books. In fact, the best books - great books, as they are called - raise the most fundamental and lively issues of all.
The best seminars occur when a leader or leaders join with students in examining the issues and questions raised by great books. In the upshot the issues should become clear; but it should also become clear that each participant, leader or student, has a responsibility to face those issues as they affect himself or herself.
Pgs. 21-22
In a Paideia school, Socratic teaching starts in kindergarten and continues throughout all twelve years of basic schooling. The main change, aside from the increasing maturity of the conversation, is in the frequency of seminars and the amount of time devoted to each. Even so, the questions, ideas, and issues themselves do not greatly change as the years pass. It is wrong to think that young children are only capable of considering and talking about "simple" ideas and issues. Justice, for example, is not a simple idea, and yet it is one that very young children are even more interested in than older ones. What is fair? Why is fairness important and desirable? Is it fair to punish someone who has done wrong?
