Although most classical educators, myself included, are highly critical of the pragmatic-progressivist pedagogical theories of John Dewey (1859–1952), Dewey’s desire to provide an education that would benefit immigrant and American-born citizens alike influenced one of the icons of the classical movement: Mortimer Adler (1902–2001). A popular Aristotelian/Thomistic philosopher, educator, and author who compiled a 50-plus-volume set of the Great Books of the Western World, Adler chaired a committee that produced a document that consciously combined American pragmatism with the classical liberal arts tradition: The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982).

The only way, Adler argues, that a democracy that grants universal suffrage can thrive is if all American children are given an equal education. Such an education will not only prepare them vocationally, it will make them good citizens who can participate fully in the workings of democracy. Indeed, so committed is Adler to his egalitarian principles that he insists that all children receive the same educational curriculum from kindergarten to twelfth grade. His proposal makes no allowance for a two-track system with honors classes for higher-performing students and remedial classes for lower-performing students.

At the same time, in keeping with his classical vision, he stipulates that his one-track system will not be vocational but will be grounded in the liberal arts, though he does maintain that liberally educated students will be able to learn new things easily after they graduate and so perform well in a multitude of jobs. “As compared with narrow, specialized training for particular jobs, general schooling is of the greatest practical value,” he argues, “because it will provide preparation for earning a living.”

As for the curriculum itself, Adler lays down a threefold plan for providing all students with the acquisition of knowledge, practical skills, and character formation. First, they will be provided with the foundational content they need through traditional lectures and textbooks that cover all the main disciplines. Second, via hands-on coaching, they will hone their reading, writing, and mathematical skills. Third, through intense Socratic discussion of the Great Books and other works of art, music, and drama, they will enlarge their understanding of intellectual and spiritual ideas and moral and ethical values. Adler defines Socratic discussion as “teaching by asking questions, by leading discussions, by helping students to raise their minds up from a state of understanding or appreciating less to a state of understanding or appreciating more.” 

Whereas one-size-fits-all approaches to education tend to yield lowest-common-denominator results, Adler grounds his characteristically American optimism in a romantic view of children that comes perilously close to another thinker whom classical education, like myself, is rightly wary of, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): “Their sameness as human beings—as members of the same species—means that every child has all the distinguishing properties common to all members of the species. They all have the same inherent tendencies, the same inherent powers, the same inherent capacities. . . . Individual differences are always only differences in degree, never differences in kind” (43). To this epistemological faith in the equal capacities of children, Adler adds a political faith that all children in America have the right to the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence.

Although Adler knows that many students will end their education when they graduate while others will seek out vocational schools, he insists that America needs more liberal arts colleges: “We need more college programs in which the major course of study offered is common to all, with but few if any electives permitted. Such colleges would be ideal institutions for the preparation of the teachers to staff our reformed basic schools.” For all his American pragmatism and egalitarianism, Adler’s vision is at one with the pedagogical vision that begins with Plato and that rests upon the passing down of tradition and the equipping of new generations to continue that transmission.

Still, lest Adler be accused of setting up a self-perpetuating cycle of teachers and students, he insists, like Cardinal Newman (1801–1890) before him, that free republics cannot survive without the kinds of generalists that a liberal arts education produces: “We need specialists for our economic prosperity, for our national welfare and security, for continued progress in all the arts and sciences, and in all fields of scholarship. But for the sake of our cultural traditions, our democratic institutions, and our individual well-being, our specialists must also be generalists; that is, generally educated human beings.”

As a follow-up to The Paideia Proposal, Adler published a second book to clarify the proposal, Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of Questions Raised by the Paideia Proposal (1983). In Chapter Four, Adler addresses thirty-one questions, the first two of which are of special concern to classical educators. First, Adler explains that although the Paideia Proposal is in part a back-to-basics movement, its focus on Socratic questioning and its willingness to try new methods makes it unique. Second, although it is not classical in the sense of teaching Greek and Latin or studying antiquity as an end in itself, it is very much classical in its focus on the Great Books. Still, the reason the Great Books form the core of Adler’s Socratic seminars is that they possess a lasting value that modern readers can use to help them wrestle with modern problems.

Although I wish all children could attend a private classical Christian school, if our failing education system would adopt the model proposed by Adler, it just might be possible again to raise and nurture virtuous, morally self-regulating citizens in our public schools.

This essay is adapted from Passing the Torch by Louis Markos. Copyright (c) 2025 by Louis A. Markos. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com

Louis Markos, PhD, Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities; his 26 books include The Myth Made Fact, From Plato to Christ, and from Achilles to Christ.

Dr. Louis Markos
College of Arts and Humanities English,
Communication, Great Texts, and Modern Languages

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