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The Paideia Proposal was a K-12 educational reform plan developed by Mortimer Adler. more...

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The description that follows is drawn from the article Reconstituting the Schools, in the 1988 edition of his book Reforming Education, The Opening of the American Mind, originally published in 1977. The purpose of the Paideia Proposal was to provide a system of liberal education for all children in the United States, not just those expected to attend college. It was based upon the following assumptions in opposition to common errors made by educators:

1) all children are educable; 2) education is never completed in school or higher institutions of learning, but is a life long process of maturity for all citizens; 3) the primary cause of learning is the activity of the child's mind, which is not created by, but only assisted by the teacher; 4) multiple types learning and teaching must be utilized in education, not just teacher lecturing, or telling; 5) a student's preparation for earning a living is not the primary objective of schooling.

In addition, he believed that individual differences, especially with respect to the natural endowments and natural environments from which children come, must be compensated by remedial or supplementary instruction and preschool tutoring, as needed. He stressed that the proposal is much more than just a return to the basics skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. Nor is it simply a return to the classics of Greek and Roman antiquities. It is a return only to what is of enduring value, and is a Democratic proposal for the education of all students, as opposed to being what was at times characterized by opponents as an elitist program.

He proposed a curriculum framework within which separate states or school districts could pluralistically vary constituent areas of study. The subject matter in the proposed curriculum were grouped in three areas with a fourth auxiliary manual skills category (not for a vocational purpose, but to acquire the mental agility of learning with one's hands), and a fifth auxiliary category introducing students to the world of work: 1) Language, Literature and the Fine Arts; 2) Mathematics and Natural Science; 3) History, Geography and Social Studies; 4) Physical Education (12 years), Manual Training including cooking, sewing, typing, machine repair (6 years); 5) general introduction to the world of work (last 2 years).

The essence of the proposal involved three necessary types of learning and respective types of teaching, the first two of which were being utilized in the current system, but the third, entirely lacking with the exception of a presence in the kindergarten or first grade levels. He characterized these three modes as knowing that, knowing how and knowing why:

1) Didactic instruction (traditional lecturing) was by and large the primary mode of teaching being applied in the traditional system. It's purpose was for the acquisition of organized knowledge or facts. Adler placed the least value on this form of knowledge and argues that it is generally evanescent, tending to fade away with time. He admits that he had forgotten almost all of the information that was learned in school under this category.

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