Word: adler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bill of Rights. Among educators there is a sense of desperation that America's young lack even the rudiments of learning, and a still greater feeling of despair that nothing can be done about it. What can and should be done about it, declares Philosopher Mortimer Adler, is a radical return to an education that is both general and liberal, and equal in quality...
Equal quantity of schooling for all students, Adler argues, has only half fulfilled "the democratic promise of equal educational opportunity"; the deeper commitment should be for equal quality for everyone. The present multitrack system, he maintains, must therefore be completely reformed. In The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (Macmillan; $2.95), published this week, he proposes a sweeping, nationwide, twelve-year, single-track academic program with virtually no electives and no vocational training. The ringing words of the late Robert Maynard Hutchins are Adler's anthem: "The best education for the best is the best education...
...Paideia proposal (which takes its name from the Greek word meaning the upbringing of a child) rests on Adler's conviction that specialization is the besetting sin of our time. The program aims, he says, at "enabling the young to become better human beings and better citizens, not just better at some particular line of work." The goal is bold, perhaps Utopian and typical of this tireless polymath. Adler, 79, is an encyclopedist and organizer of knowledge whose Great Books (with Hutchins) and Great Ideas volumes set out simply, and comprehensively, to make the intellectual monuments of Western civilization...
...opportunities for growth lie in the new technologies." The Scripps company had already invested $10.5 million in a computer and communications center located in Dallas and in 500 video display terminals in U.P.I.'s 146 domestic and 60 foreign bureaus. Media News, said U.P.I. Director of Information William Adler, has "the know-how and the money to turn us around." Now it also has title to a cornucopia of highly marketable state-of-the-art publishing hardware that, some insiders point out, would sell swiftly and well in case the hoped-for turnaround fails to materialize...
...other book, Jeffrey Lant's collection of reminiscences, spans "distinguished graduates" form 1917 (Buckminster Fuller) to 1981 John H. Adler. Since I am neither distinguished nor-till tomorrow-a graduate, my criticism will likely sound shrill, still and all, a good number of these stones might better have been recounted over drinks at the Harvest during twenty-fifth reunions. As a general rule, the older grads are more interesting, if much less recognizable. And in one short piece, a tribute to Perry Miler, Robert Coles '50 succeeds better then the rest in being both eloquent and moving...