ABSTRACT
Paideia teaching and learning is best understood as part of a comprehensive school reform program that began in 1981 with the publication of The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto. Written by philosopher Mortimer Adler and a network of scholars and intellectuals who called themselves the Paideia Group, this book sparked an intense debate about the quality of American public schools—a debate that gained in scope and intensity a few months later when A Nation at Risk was published. The Paideia Proposal was followed by 12 principles (see Figure 1.1) with profound implications for the classroom as well as for the entire school and community. The Paideia Principles
All children can learn.
Therefore, they all deserve the same quality of schooling, not just the same quantity
The quality of schooling to which they are entitled is what the wisest parents would wish for their own children, the best education for the best being the best education for all.
Schooling at its best is preparation for becoming generally educated in the course of a whole lifetime, and that schools should be judged on how well they provide such preparation.
The three callings for which schooling should prepare all Americans are (a) to earn a decent livelihood, (b) to be a good citizen of the nation and the world, and (c) to make a good life for one's self.
The primary cause of genuine learning is the activity of the learner's own mind, sometimes with the help of a teacher functioning as a secondary and cooperative cause.
The three kinds of teaching that should occur in our schools are didactic teaching of subject matter, coaching that produces the skills of learning, and Socratic questioning in seminar discussion.
The results of these three kinds of teaching should be (a) the acquisition of organized knowledge, (b) the formation of habits of skill in the use of language and mathematics, and (c) the growth of the mind's understanding of basic ideas and issues.
Each student's achievement of these results would be evaluated in terms of that student's competencies and not solely related to the achievement of other students.
The principal of a school should never be a mere administrator, but always a leading teacher in the school who should be cooperatively engaged with the school's teaching staff in planning, reforming, and reorganizing the school as an educational community.
The principal and faculty of a school should themselves be actively engaged in learning.
The desire to continue their own learning should be the prime motivation of those who dedicate their lives to the profession of teaching.
