Adler on Education (Part 2)

Prescriptions and proposals

This is Part 2 of an essay on Mortimer Adler’s article, “The Schooling of a People” from the edited volume, Reforming Education.

Part 1 is here:

Adler on the Problem of Education (Part 1)

Last time, I largely agreed with Adler’s plea for educators to sit up and pay attention to the Problem of Education as it presents itself in an entirely new era, both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking. Adler persuades of the need to educate everyone, not just an elite few. No longer are the great masses of humankind merely laborers with no leisure to learn. Qualitatively, with the rise of science and technology, with all its promises and threats, wholesale culture change similarly requires a complete re-think of education for all. Even though the American commitment to education for democratic purposes was solid from the beginning and throughout our nation’s history, actual progress was realized in fits and starts. But by the mid-20th century, when Adler was writing, he did see most people achieving at least a high school education. Education “for all” meant compulsory schooling until age 16 or 18, with the expectation that almost everyone would receive at least a high school diploma, and that there would be public funding for the whole system.

In the last two sections of his article, Adler gets prescriptive about the future of “basic schooling” for the K-12 demographic. He will not take space to deal with teacher-training or the role of scholarly advancement of knowledge (principles 5 and 6), but he certainly tackles what form “basic schooling” should take — for all — and to what end.

All the Arts

Adler’s main point in the entire article is that by moving from a class-based society — the circumstance of most all of history, all over the world, until recently — to a classless society, everyone comes to deserve a basic liberal arts education. It is the type of education deserved by all human beings as such, says Adler, citing the Declaration of Independence (p. 129). Now, because of industrialization and mechanization, everyone will have the leisure time to engage in lifelong learning and will need a liberal education to be able to learn well. There’s no longer a class-based distinction between the uneducated, laboring masses and a highly educated elite, the learned rulers.

Compared to an emerging democracy in the early American republic, where class-based social structures still held sway, when Jefferson first broached some tentative early educational reforms, now there is no longer even a distinction between working citizens, who at least required basic literacy and numeracy (“three years of basic schooling”) in order to vote, and an educated elite who in the eyes of American founders would be the capable “representatives” of the people who voted for them.

Beyond even Jefferson and the founders, all people have become “rulers” of themselves, in a nation where government is of the people, by the people, for the people, equally full humans (not laboring slaves) and full citizens. Education for all, liberal education, is to be offered both 1) for the sake of the enjoyment of the leisure that all now possess in at least some measure, in pursuit of lifelong learning — because it is in the nature of human beings as such to flourish through such pursuit; and 2) for the sake of being good democratic citizens.

This all sounds lovely! And I agree with Adler’s proposals for “undifferentiated” education for all. But I want to raise two disagreements first, based on what I think are two faulty assumptions, perhaps rather dangerous assumptions.

To introduce the first, I want to pull out Adler’s agreement with Dewey about “vocational” study. Everyone, it turns out, may learn about the “trades” or as they’ve been called: the manual arts, the domestic arts, “vocational technology” (“vo-tech” in my high school growing up). Everyone may learn about them, but only as “one aspect of their introduction to the world” — i.e. in liberal fashion. An undifferentiated basic schooling curriculum for all

may include the study of vocations or occupations, but not, as John Dewey pointed out, for the sake of training the young for jobs, which is the training of slaves, but rather as one aspect of their introduction to the world in which they will live.

Source: “Schooling of a People” p. 131

That, I’m sorry, is bullshit. Pardon my strong language. The training of human beings in the arts of agriculture, transportation, communication, human services, caring for homes and cars and gardens and fields, or running the mechanized, industrialized machines — upon which we all now depend for our societal move to a (supposedly) classless society and for equal opportunity in leisure and lifelong learning — is not the training of slaves!

Earning one’s living through a “job,” work, a career, a vocation, a profession, at either a high school-educated “blue collar” level or a college-educated “white collar” level is completely honorable.¹ Everyone needs to be able to earn a living, but that doesn’t mean you’re a slave or a mere laborer. Today it requires being highly skilled in fact — in the domestic arts, agricultural arts, manual or technical arts, in finance, in business, in entrepreneurship, in “trade” (said not with a sneer). Classical disdain for all these supposedly low (“banausic”) occupations is itself to be disdained today. Everyone should learn them, for the sake of being human, and not for the sake of being “slave labor.”

This classic duality drawn by the Greeks, by Jefferson, by Dewey, by Adler following them, between, on the one hand, the laboring, uneducated (or at most, “vocationally trained”) masses and, on the other hand, the truly educated, liberally educated leisure class is a false dichotomy. Starting in the 1950’s college-educated “white-collar” workers became cogs in corporate machines, and in our present internet age are fleeing their (slavish) cubicles to become online solopreneurs, finally liberated from “the Man” and in charge of their own economic fate. Starting in the last few decades, certainly here in the US, we’re increasingly short-handed and hard-pressed to find truly skilled and competent workers-with-their-hands — crafts people, trades people, farmers and ecologists, caregivers, entrepreneurs — who have the ability to care for the things and people of the real, physical world and its mechanical and biological processes, our lived human economy upon which all of us “thinkers” are utterly dependent. How much are the plumber’s and the nurse’s skills worth?

At the very least, we need a post-Greek tripartite division: 1) genuinely unskilled manual laborers (a class presumably already mostly replaced by machines, and soon robots), 2) skilled artists, tradespeople, technicians, craftspeople — in the whole wide range covering all the arts, and 3) yes, liberally-educated human beings who learn in the humanities: history, literature, fine arts, philosophy, even the sciences and technologies as “aspects of the world in which we live.” To be good human beings, all of us need to do all three, to be all three kinds of humans: 1) to work with our hands and bodies, in the real world, in nature, away from devices and screens, getting out of our heads and out of all the virtual worlds available at the touch of a finger; 2) to upskill in the many arts and technologies of the real world, which have become increasingly sophisticated and complex, and upon which we are all utterly dependent; and, yes, 3) to enjoy leisure time and use it well to engage in all manner of lifelong learning, both artful and humanistic.

Democratized Aristotle vs the Anthropocene

My second disagreement, not unrelated to the first, is to question Adler’s over-commitment to an Aristotelian (Platonic, Greek philosophical) view of the human being “as such.” Aristotle thought human beings found their ultimate fulfillment not, of course, in slave labor. But also not in practical political activity, playing the role of the “statesman.” Rather, the genuine aim of the human as such was contemplation, wonder, not activity, not even political activity. For Aristotle, the best human is a philosopher. For Plato, similarly, the goal is to ascend contemplatively to a vision of eternal verities — from which, yes, the enlightened philosopher (con)descends back to earth to help liberate his former fellow cave-dwellers, chained as they are and seeing only shadows. Plato had his vision of the true Ideas or Forms. Aristotle had his doctrine of four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), where mere laborers could excel at using matter efficiently if guided by a form-seeing craftsperson or artist, working on command of the master, for whom true knowledge resides in teleology, in knowing eternal Final Causes, toward which all of Nature (physis) drives or unfolds, as acorns into oak trees.

Adler acknowledges both the higher contemplative aim of human beings qua humans and the secondary aim of political activity and citizenship needed for democracy. (Aristotle was not a fan of democracy any more than of political action.) He seems to see an undifferentiated liberal arts education for all as conducive to both. But lifelong learning as a goal, as a flourishing end (telos) and purpose for all humans, seems to be distinct from the basic schooling one needs to be a good citizen. Lifelong learning is for leisure time and humanistic enjoyment. Liberal (leisurely, free) education escapes the grasp of the uncouth — the young and inexperienced — who must attain maturity, even gray old age. This seems other than the active life of the democratic citizen, undertaken even from relative youth.

I would not make any hard distinction between philosophy and politics, contemplation and the active life. Each serves the other, equally, intertwined. Humanistic education requires the same maturity as needed for humans to be good economic, political, and ecological beings in the Anthropocene. Everyone requires lifelong learning, and lifelong learning itself requires a complex curriculum of non-esoteric activities:

• the continued acquisition of arts, skills, and technologies

• humanistic reading and thinking about history, literature, and philosophy

• first-hand experience of a diverse world through travel

• crafting techne for use as frameworks of knowledge and practice to aid in responsible citizenship, civic and political participation, teaching, and leadership

• and — perhaps most of all — the cultivation of virtue, to be good human beings.

Adler’s Proposed Reorganization of Schooling

Adler argues for undifferentiated basic schooling — i.e. all students get the same K-12 education and against a differentiated approach, i.e. elementary school in common for all, then shunting each student along either a “vocational” or “college prep” track in high school. In the final section of his article, Adler lays out his “proposed reorganization” of schooling from the current system. It’s interesting to note that the then-current system Adler describes is still the system we have formally in place today. His policy mission obviously failed. Many informal and supplemental developments for youth and adult education have been added since he wrote, mostly due to opportunities arising via the internet: MOOCs, online coding camps, Kahn Academy, and so on. But our formal, public school system remains remarkably the same.

Adler’s proposed new plan is for twelve years of basic schooling, which he would push up to start at age four and finish at age 16 with a bachelor’s degree, signifying essential competence in the ability to learn. The basic phase of education could possibly still be divided into primary and secondary halves, but that “would have little educational significance” if the whole period involves undifferentiated education for everyone. The aim of basic schooling for all would thus be:

to inculcate the arts of learning and to introduce the young to the world of learning — to make them competent learners, in short, rather [than] to try to make them genuinely learned (which is impossible for the young).

Source: p. 136, emphasis added to distinguish learners from the learned

Competence in learning means competence in the liberal arts, “which are the arts or skills of learning in all fields of subject matter.” Basic schooling should be sufficient for everyone, many of whom will continue lifelong learning in autodidactic or self-educated ways over the course of adult life. Or, basic schooling could be preparatory for further formal, advanced schooling involving professional training and specialization.

Eventually, there is thus opportunity for “advanced schooling,” entirely voluntary, which is open to all who are qualified “by criteria of aptitude, competence, and inclination” (i.e. natural talent, adequate skills developed so far, and desire). Advanced education need not be exclusionary based on financial resources, either, since it would “be at the public expense or involve only nominal fees.” It might involve some further general education (additional, further cultivation of the liberal arts), but its real purpose is

specialized training in all the learned professions and in all vocations requiring technical proficiency, as well as specialized training for the profession of learning itself — all the forms of scholarship and research involved in the advancement of learning.

Source: p. 136

In Adler’s scheme there would no longer be four years of “college.” Instead, beyond basic schooling (which grants a bachelor’s degree at 16!), those who choose it and who are sufficiently able and prepared, can eventually opt for advanced schooling to specialize and to train to be highly skilled professionals (doctors, engineers), teachers, researchers, or scholars.

The eventually is important. Between basic and advanced schooling, Adler strongly recommends two to four years (minimum) of “scholastic hiatus,” what has since come to be known (approximately) as a “gap year” — although in Adler’s vision, the time duration has lengthened considerably.

The purposes of an extended educational hiatus are three, worth quoting in full:

(1) to interrupt the continuity of schooling and save the young from the scholastic ennui that results from too many successive years of sitting in classrooms and doing their lessons; (2) to counteract the delayed maturity induced by too many years of continuous schooling and thus to remedy some of the disorders of adolescence; and (3) to populate our institutions of higher learning with students who have gained a certain degree of maturity through the experiences afforded them by nonscholastic employments, as well as with students who return to educational institutions for further schooling because they have a genuine desire of further formal study and an aptitude for it, instead of students who occupy space in our higher institutions as the results of social pressures or because to continue on with more schooling is following the path of least resistance.

Source: p. 137

In short, an extended educational hiatus is necessary to let young people take a break, gain real world experience, and grow up — thereby improving the quality of the higher education experience for everyone. For anyone who has taught undergraduates in the last 20 years, it’s hard not to concur with Adler on all these points!

Adler closes out his proposal by addressing the social dimension of education (see Principle 4 in his list), a definition for what it means to “be educated,” and a last pronouncement on the purpose of education. Again, it’s worth quoting in full. His concern is fundamentally with no less than

the ideal of the educated man under the circumstances of contemporary life — in our kind of society and our kind of culture. As an idealistic democrat, I have tried to reconceive that ideal in a way which makes it attainable in some degree by all human beings, not just the exceptional few for whom the ideal, as traditionally formulated, was exclusively realizable. If our kind of society and culture is dedicated to the education of a whole people, not just the development of a small class of educated person, then the notion of the educated person must hold out a goal toward which every human being can strive and which, given facilitating circumstances, he can achieve in some measure.

This make sense if we define being educated not in terms of the traditional intellectual virtues or in terms of certain high attainments with respect to the arts and sciences, but rather in terms of having competence as a learner and using that competence to continue learning throughout a lifetime and to engage in other of the creative pursuits of leisure. Every human being, from those with the humblest endowments up to the most gifted among use, can become an educated person in this sense.

Since the purpose of schooling is not to produce educated men and women but rather to facilitate their becoming educated in the course of a lifetime, it serves that purpose well 1) only if basic schooling for all tries to make the young learners rather than learned and tries to make them avid for learning rather than turn them away from it; 2) only if advanced schooling for some initiates them in the process of becoming learned, both in general and in specialized fields; and 3) only if other facilities for becoming learned, whether in educational institutions or by other means, are provided by society for all, those who have had advanced schooling as well as those who have had only basic schooling.

A choice in favor of undifferentiated basic schooling and in favor of the proposed reorganization of our educational institutions would, I submit, help us to school a whole people in the manner that would facilitate their becoming an educated people as a whole.

Source: p. 137-138 (with slight change in paragraphing, added bold, and added numerals for the three conditional “only ifs”)

An Anthropocene proposal for lifelong education could do far worse than adopt Adler’s proposal wholesale — except that it must include “vocational” study (all the arts) throughout basic schooling, along with liberal education.

I would also add opportunities for advanced schooling throughout adulthood, not just after a two-to-four-year break for young adults. Most people either have to, or they desire to, retrain professionally many times throughout a long lifetime.

I would also make less of a distinction between formal (institutional, degree-granting) education and the many informal learning opportunities afforded by online accessibility. Skill-oriented, vocation/profession-oriented, ongoing education AND lifelong humanistic, liberal education are BOTH needed, not just “for leisure” but for life, for taking responsibility in a new planetary era, for being competent citizens, for growing into virtuous and good human beings, as such.

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

1. However common these kinds of distinctions were in Adler’s day, or in my own youth, I don’t think they even apply any more, certainly not easily.