Word: adler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...class Mortimer Adler harassed the eminent professor by sending him long, learned letters pointing out how his lectures contradicted his earlier lectures. For a time, Pragmatist Dewey read the letters in class, but eventually he called Adler to his office and suggested he lay off. Adler did not lay off. He has continued to take intellectual potshots at Dewey and his disciples...
...Adler revolted against this universe. He reasserted the old-fashioned belief that ideals like freedom and democracy are not mere regional preferences, but demonstrably good; that man has will and reason with which to distinguish between good & evil. He felt that organized U.S. education, dominated by the pragmatists, was "one of the largest rackets in this country," turning out students "chaotically informed and viciously indoctrinated with the local prejudices of professors and their textbooks." Most U.S. college graduates, says Adler, can neither read, write nor think properly. They are not being taught how to lead a good life...
What to do about it? Adler, Hutchins and a band of dedicated fellow guerrillas -notably Stringfellow Barr, former president of St. John's College, Scott Buchanan, former dean of St. John's, and Mark Van Doren, English professor at Columbia-have answered long & loud: make U.S. education truly liberal. That means, according to Adler, that 1) American college professors must commit academic hara-kiri by giving up their specialized fields; they should be able to teach anything in the liberal arts; 2) the scientific method should stick to science, and leave to philosophy the job of determining matters...
...aimless nibbling at knowledge, or to excessive specialization. But there is bitter disagreement as to what should be done. Most Deweyites insist that 20th century students must combine the liberal arts with "useful" studies, and that the learning of the past must be "reconstructed" to fit present needs. Adler feels that this view has led to totally inadequate half measures, i.e., digested "survey" courses in the humanities. But there are signs that the great battle-variously expressed as Humanists v. Pragmatists, Thomists V. Positivists,* Adler v. the rest of U.S. education -is slowly beginning to turn...
...ground swell is strong and deep: Adler, Hutchins & Co. are only part of it. The atom bomb, more than anything else, showed the U.S. that (in Adler's words) "the more science we have the more we are in need of wisdom to prevent its misuse." Reinhold Niebuhr expressed a growing uneasiness in the U.S. conscience over confused and slipshod morality. Arnold Toynbee found wide response when he attacked the easy optimism which regards history as an endless escalator to progress rather than a continuing struggle between good & evil. The Harvard report on U.S. education (TIME...