Quality, Not Just Quantity

By Richard Stengel

The Paideia proposal aims to reform America's schools

Of his early education, Henry Adams once wrote, "It taught little and that little ill." Many of America's schools today teach precious little of what students ought to know, and that little ill. High school diplomas are routinely awarded to students who are functionally illiterate, who cannot do long division, and who have no idea what is contained in the 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 for all.

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 for all."

The 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 available to any reader.

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.

The primary elements of the Paideia proposal are what Adler calls the three columns. These represent the three types of learning that should go on simultaneously throughout all twelve years as well as the styles of teaching required for each. The first consists of the acquisition of fundamental knowledge: history, literature, languages, mathematics, science and the fine arts. This material should be instilled didactically, through lectures and the like. The second column develops the basic intellectual skills of reading, writing, mathematical computation and scientific investigation: know-how as opposed to know-what. These should be taught just as physical or athletic skills are taught, through practice and coaching. The third and most innovative column refers to the enlargement of understanding: the aesthetic appreciation of works of art and the ability to think critically about ideas and values. This calls for a Socratic method of teaching, the lone requirement a large table of students where the teacher is simply the first among equals.

In addition, Adler proposes twelve years of physical education and eight years of manual arts (such as cooking, typing, automobile repair), and at least one year of instruction to help in choosing a career. Paideia thus becomes "the general learning that should be the possession of all human beings."

To 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 the program a three-year trial run.

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."

A more serious objection being raised against Paideia is the charge that it is elitist. Harvard Sociologist David Riesman doubts that a nation as diverse as the U.S. could sustain a uniform "core" curriculum: "It could be done in Japan, it is done in France, but we're too heterogeneous in this country." Educational Historian Paul Nash of Boston University places Paideia in "the tradition of the gentleman's education." Studying such things as the Iliad, he contends, will serve to make the "non-gentlemen groups"--blacks, Hispanics, women, the lower class--less employable than before. Adler, however, fiercely maintains that society's low expectations of children are self-fulfilling. He affirms that "everyone is educable up to his or her capacity," precisely what Paideia is designed to do.

Adler does not deny the difficulties.

He concedes that it may take 30 years for Paideia and like-minded reforms to reverse entrenched attitudes and practices.

Indeed, Paideia is part of a nationwide trend toward more traditional and rigorous schooling. Ultimately, as David Ries man suggested, only by hitching the rick ety wagon of American education to a star can it be made to budge an inch. Affirms Adler: "An ideal--even a difficult one --excites everyone's imagination. To say it cannot be done is to beg the question. We've got to try it."

-- By Richard Stengel. Reported by Dorothy Ferenbaugh/New York and J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago

With reporting by Dorothy Ferenbaugh, J. MADELEINE NASH

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