The Paideia Group
Mortimer Adler
In 1982, educational philosopher Mortimer Adler, led a diverse cadre of educators and intellectuals to form the Paideia Group. Adler had studied at the University of Chicago with John Dewey and later joined with colleague Robert Maynard Hutchins to collect and organize the Great Books.
The Paideia Group set about to describe an approach to public education appropriate for American democracy. We continue to shape schools based on the work of this group.
Members of the Paideia Group:
• MORTIMER J. ADLER, Chairman
Director, Institute for Philosophical Research;
Chairman, Board of Editors, Encyclopaedia Brittanica
• JACQUES BARZUN
Former Provost, Columbia University
Literary Adviser, Charles Scribner’s Sons
• OTTO BIRD
Former Head, General Program of Liberal Studies,
University of Notre Dame
• LEON BOTSTEIN
President, Bard College
President, Simon’s Rock of Bard College
• ERNEST L. BOYER
President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,
Washington, D.C.
• NICHOLAS L. CAPUTI
Principal, Skyline High School, Oakland, California
• DOUGLASS CATER
Senior Fellow, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies
• DONALD COWAN
Former President, University of Dallas
Fellow, Dallas Institute of Humanities And Cultures
• ALONZO A. CRIM
Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools, Atlanta, Georgia
• CLIFTON FADIMAN
Author and critic
• DENNIS GRAY
Deputy Director, Council For Basic Education, Washington, D.C.
• RICHARD HUNT
Senior Lecturer and Director of the Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowships Program,
Harvard University
One Comment
Dear Colleagues:
I think the following statement on your website about the Paideia Group is in error:
“Adler had studied at the University of Chicago with John Dewey and later joined with colleague Robert Maynard Hutchins to collect and organize the Great Books.”
Adler may have studied with Dewey, but it would have been when Dewey returned to Columbia, not while he was at Chicago. The historical point, given the Hutchins Dewey debates, is not without significance: “Adler received a scholarship to Columbia where he effortlessly completed his B.A. course of studies in Philosophy…he enrolled in the graduate program where he so impressed the faculty with his knowledge of the classics and of philosophy that he was allowed to join the staff and was subsequently granted his Ph.D… While a staff member Adler worked with the man who had first turned him onto the classics, John Erskine…. Interestingly, at Columbia Adler also become familiar with John Dewey against whom he would later rail with great passion,…” http://www.nndb.com/people/593/000089326/ See also a Dick Cavett interview in which this institutional relation is made clear: http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/02/dick-cavett-interview-of-mortimer-adler.html
Thanks for your great work on behalf of sound education,
Scott Lee
ACTC Executive Director