Word: paideia
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...Paideia proposal aims to reform America's schools...
Three years ago, Adler, director of the Chicago-based Institute for Philosophical Research, formed the Paideia Group, a panel of 22 educators and scholars who held a series of conferences seeking a new approach to public schooling. Among the participants: former Columbia University Provost Jacques Barzun, Bard College President Leon Botstein, Editor and Critic Clifton Fadiman...
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...
...Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture...