Word: paideia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Adler's Paideia...
...extreme, Adler's The Paideia Proposal offers an impassioned but simplistic reminder of What Education Is For, Proposing that all high school curricula be revamped into a three-column, 12-year approach, Adler advocates attentive teaching of "acquisition of organized knowledge" (history, languages, science, taught by rote); "development of intellectual skills" (reading, speaking, problem-solving, taught by drill); and "enlarged understanding of ideas and values" (works of art and aesthetic appreciation, taught by Socratic discussion...
...highly gifted, strongly motivated teachers"--Adler points up exactly the stumbling block on which previous reform efforts have tumbled. Unfortunately, his scenario is so far in the clouds that it loses all relevance to education's current state. Notes sociologist David Riesman '31, who has taken exception publicly to Paideia's generally positive reception: "Hitching your wagon to a star is one thing, but if the wagon is mired in the mud and the star looks too remote, no one will make the effort to move...
...Adler, Paideia is a model within reach. He is preparing a manual, to be issued next year, that will help school systems and teachers implement the proposal. One teaching experiment has already been carried out at the Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif. Seventy-five students spent one year studying 50 of Adler's Great Books, using the Socratic method of pedagogy. The results, says Principal Nicholas Caputi, were "stellar," but some 80% of the students were classified as gifted anyway. A fuller test will come in Chicago, where Superintendent Ruth Love plans a pilot school that will give...
Some educators familiar with Paideia suggest that Adler has neglected one crucial question: Who will teach the teachers? Phil Keisling, an editor of the Washington Monthly, believes that "the legions of incompetent teachers is an even more distressing problem than the laxity of curricular standards." Adler acknowledges that further reforms will be necessary to retrain teachers, and he urges that teachers should receive a solid liberal arts education and "the hell with courses in pedagogy and educational philosophy...