1 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and
Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1987); E.D. Hirsch, Cultural
Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1987)
2 see, for example, Stanley Fish, "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too";
Molefi Kete Asante, "Multiculturalism: An Exchange"; and Ted Gordon and Wahneema Lubiano, "The
Statement of the Black Faculty Caucus", all reprinted in Debating P.C.: The Controversy Over Political
Correctness on Campuses, ed. Paul Berman (New York, Dell, 1992)
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Chapter 6.
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York, Oxford University Press, 1946, 1956); Peter Novick,
That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (New York,
Cambridge University Press, 1988); Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973), in which he contended that historical stories, like all others, were made rather than found.
5 Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1943), 1.
Christopher Derrick, Escape From Skepticism: Liberal Education As If Truth Mattered (La Salle, IL, Sherwood Sugden, 1977), 12.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man: How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality (New York, Macmillan, 1947), 27.
8 Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education (Garden City, Image Books, 1961, 1965), 11.
10 Plato, The Laws, tr. T.J. Saunders (New York, Penguin Books, 1959), 643e.
11 Plato, The Republic, op cit., 402A.
12 Even in the twentieth century, there are popular versions of this notion: in the hit song of the 1940's, "It
ain't whatcha do, it's the way howcha do it;" in Grantland Rice's now ridiculed line that judgment on us will
be based "not on whether you won or lost, but on how you played the game;" and in Becket's realization in
T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral that "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right thing,
for the wrong reason."
13 Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 982b.
14 In an analogous way, William Barrett, in his The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a
Technological Civilization (New York, Anchor Books, 1979) argues that there is no such thing as pure
technique, that all techniques are used to accomplish some goal, and that that goal had to be chosen in favor
of other possible goals.
15 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, op cit., 1104B; referring to Plato, The Laws, op cit., 653A-C, and The
Republic, op cit., 401E-402A.
16 Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of St. Augustine, tr. John K. Ryan (Image Books, New York,
1960); Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967)
17 Christopher Dawson, op cit., 11.
18 Frederick B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages, AD 200-1500: An Historical Survey (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1953, 1980); Norman F. Cantor, Medieval History: The Life and Death of a
Civilization (New York, Macmillan, 1969); F.C. Copelston, A History of Medieval Philosophy (New York,
Harper, 1972); David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (New York, Vintage, 1962)
John Henry Cardinal Newman, Essay on the Development of the Christian Doctrine (Garden City, Image
Books, 1960), 13.
S. Aronowitz and H. Giroux, "Schooling, Culture, and Literacy in the Age of Broken Dreams: A Review
of Bloom and Hirsch," Harvard Educational Review 58, 2, 173-194; T.H. Estes, C.J. Gutman, and E.K.
Harrison, "Cultural Literacy: What Every Educator Needs to Know," Educational Leadership September,
1988; H. Harper, "Literacy and the State: A Comparison of Hirsch, Rosenblatt, and Giroux," English
Quarterly 22, 3-4, 169-175; E.D. Hirsch, op cit.; P. McLaren, "Culture or Canon: Critical Pedagogy and the
Politics of Literacy" Harvard Educational Review 58, 2, 213-235; F. Newmann, "Another View of Cultural
Literacy," Social Education 52, 6, 438; M. Tarter and L. Christenbury, "The Cultural Literacy Movement:
Content Wars in the Social Studies and English," Teacher Education 24, 4, 15-20.
21 Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (New York, Macmillan, 1982);
Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of the Questions Raised by The Paideia Proposal
(New York, Macmillan, 1983); The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus (New York, Macmillan,
1984); "The Paideia Proposal: A Symposium," Harvard Educational Review, November, 1983, 377-411.
G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox (Image Books, Garden City, 1933, 1956), 80.
Aristotle, Politics VIII, 1337 b.
24 Emerson, op cit., 345.
25 Tyrell Bell, United States Commissioner of Education, 1974
26 National Commission of Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational
Reform (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983)
27 Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto, op cit., 4.
28 John Locke, "Some Thoughts Concerning Education," The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed.
James L. Axtell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968), 109-325.
29 John Locke, "Of the Conduct of the Understanding," in Classics in Education, no. 31, ed. Francis W.
Garforth (New York, 1966), 53.
30 Plato, The Republic (New York, Penguin Books, 1955, 1982), 527b.
31 Jeremy Bentham, The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, Volume X, 142.
32 Ibid., 164
33 David Kearns and Denis Doyle, Winning the Brain Race: A Bold Plan to Make Our Schools Competitive
(San Francisco, Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1989)
34 Emerson, op cit., 346.
35 Thomas F. Green, The Activities of Teaching (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1971)
36 Emerson, "Self-Reliance," Selected Essays, Letters, and Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Robert
Spiller (New York, Washington Square Press, 1965), 245.
37 "Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind, "your definition of a horse." "Quadruped. Gramnivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and
twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to
be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer. "Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know what a horse is."
38 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (New York, Penguin, 1962), III, 1112.
39 ibid., II, 1106b.
40 Mortimer Adler, "A Sound Moral Philosophy," Reforming Education: The Opening of the American
Mind (New York, Macmillan, 1988), 254.
41 John Dewey, op cit., 85.
42 Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of
the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York, Harper and Row, 1985); and The
Good Society (New York, Vintage, 1991); see also, edited by the same group, Individualism and
Commitment in American Life: Readings on the Themes of Habits of the Heart (New York, Harper and
Row, 1987)
43 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J.P. Mayer (New York,
Doubleday, 1969)
44 ibid., 565.
45 ibid., 538.
ibid., 435.
see, for example, Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1967); Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1932, 1960); Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty: A
Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America (New York, W.W. Norton, 1984); Perry Miller, The New
England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1939); Edmund S. Morgan,
Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, W.W. Norton,
1988); and Puritanism and Democracy (New York, Harper and Row, 1944)
48 Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, Random House, 1967) ;Henry Steele
Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (New
York, Oxford University Press, 1977); Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789 (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1956, 1977); Richard B. Morris, Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton,
Madison, Jay, and the Constitution (New York, New American Library, 1985); and Clinton Rossiter, The
First American Revolution: The American Colonies on the Eve of Independence (New York, Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1933, 1956)
49 Quoted in Lewis Perry, Intellectual Life in America: A History (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1984), 155-156.
50 M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York,
W.W. Norton, 1971); Jacques Barzun, Classic, Romantic, and Modern (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1943, 1961)
51 Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1965)
52 Tocqueville, op cit., 510.
53 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, from Bryan to F.D.R. (New York, Random House, 1955);
Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New
York, Free Press, 1963); James T. Kloppenburg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism
in European and American Thought, 1870-1920 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986); Arthur S.
Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (New York, Harper, 1954); Nell Irvin Painter,
Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York, W.W. Norton, 1987); and Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (New York, Penguin, 1985)
54 see especially Robert N. Bellah et al, op cit.
55
56 Lawrence Cremin American Education: The Metropolitan Experience (New York, Harper and Row,
1988), 232.
57 Richard Hofstadter Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, Vintage Books, 1963), 323.
58 David Tyack The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 1974), 185.
59 Tyack, op. cit., 177
60 see Stephen J. Sniegoski "William Torrey Harris: Nineteenth Century Proponent of Academic Excellence"
in The University Bookman, XXVII, No. 3, 3-8.
61 Hazel W. Hertzberg "History and Progressivism: A Century of Reform Proposals" in Historical Literacy:
The Case for History in American Education (New York, Macmillan, 1989), 73.
62 Hofstadter, op. cit., 347.
63 National Education Association "Report of the Committee of Nine on the Articulation of School and
College" in Proceedings, 1911, 559-561.
64 Ibid., 565.
65 Hofstadter, op cit., 367.
66 National Education Association "The Social Studies in Secondary Education" Bulletin 28 (1916), 9
67 John Dewey Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York,
Free Press, 1916), 121
68 National Education Association "The Social Studies in Secondary Education" Bulletin 28 (1916), 21
69 Cremin, op. cit., 249
70 Tyack, op. cit., 191
71 Merle Curti The Social Ideas of American Educators (Totowa, NJ, Littlefield, Adams, 1978) 258
72 For what is still the definitive history of progressive education, see Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation
of the Schools: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York, Vintage Books, 1961)
73 ibid., 349
74 Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1985), 236.
75 Martin Schiesi, "Progressive Reform in Los Angeles Under Mayor Alexander," Southern California
Quarterly, LIV, (1974), 37-56.
76 Starr, op cit., 236; see also George Mowry, The California Progressives (Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1951), Chapter Four, "What Manner of Men: The Progressive Mind"
77 Ernest May, The End of American Innocence: The First Years of Our Own Time, 1912-1917 (New York,
Oxford University Press, 1959), 90-92.
78 Schiesi, op cit., 38-40.
79 Judith Raftery, "The Evolution of Modern Urban Schooling: Los Angeles, 1885-1940" (Unpublished
Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 1984), 13.
80 Ibid., quoting from the Superintendent's report of 1914
81 Henry Winfred Splitter, "Education in Los Angeles: 1850-1900, Part III", The Quarterly of the Southern
California Historical Society, XXXIII, 4 (December, 1951), 317-318.
82 Tyack, op cit., 175-176.
83 Herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958 (New York, Routledge, 1986),
97.
84 Franklin Bobbitt, "Curriculum Re-Examination in Los Angeles," High School Research Bulletin of the
Los Angeles City Schools, Volume II, No. 9 (February 5, 1923), 1; see also Franklin Bobbitt, "Continuation of Curriculum Work," High School Research Bulletin of the Los Angeles City Schools, Volume II, No. 13
(April 9, 1923), 1-4.
85 John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1909), 25-26.
86 David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1974), 191.
Education Policies Commission, Education for ALL American Youth (Washington, D.C.: NEA, 1944)
U.S. Office of Education, Life Adjustment Education for Every Youth (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, n.d.), 15.
89 U.S. Office of Education, Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1948-50 (Washington,
D.C., 1951), 26-27.
90 This was true to the extent that Joel Spring and others can describe both the fight against "anti-intellectualism" and the general attack on progressive education as direct results of the anti-Communist
fervor of the 1950's
91 For examples of both kinds of criticism, see Bernard Iddings Bell, Crisis In Education: A Challenge to
American Complacency (New York, Whittlesey House, 1949); Mortimer Smith, And Madly Teach: A
Layman Looks at Public School Education (Chicago, Henry Regnery, 1949); Albert Lynd, Quackery in the
Public Schools (Boston, Little, Brown, 1953).
92 Arthur E. Bestor, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat From Learning in Our Schools (Chicago,
University of Illinois Press, 1953, 1985), 21.
93 Ibid., 56-62
94 ibid., 25-39
95 ibid., 25
96 ibid., 31
97 ibid., 77
98 See, for example, "Crisis In Education," Life (March, 1958)
99 See especially the Illinois Secondary School Curriculum Program, Bulletin No. 16, The Schools and
National Security (May, 1951)
100 See C. Wayne Gordon, The High School As a Social System (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1957); James
Coleman, The Adolescent Society (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1961); Edgar Z. Freidenberg, Coming of Age In
America (New York, Random House, 1970); and Talcott Parsons, "The School Class as a Social System:
Some of Its Functions in American Society," Harvard Educational Review, 29, Fall, 1959: 297-318.
101 Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 (New York, Harper
and Row, 1988), 241-242.
102 Described in Ravitch, op cit., 69: "The examination given by the CEEB, once firmly rooted in a common
liberal arts curriculum, was replaced in 1947 by the SAT, a standardized, multiple-choice test of verbal and
mathematical skills, which was virtually curriculum free." This not only assumed the possibility of testing for
general scholastic ability, it had significant long-term effects on high school curriculum planning, both in
preparation for the test and in preparation for college.
103 James B. Conant, My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor (New York, Harper and Row, 1970)
104 For Conant's early support of the SAT, a test developed by IQ maven Carl Brigham, see A. Harry
Passow, American Secondary Education: The Conant Influence (Reston, VA, National Association of
Secondary School Principals), 417-432; for his pressuring ETS to produce a fool-proof way to test for the
distinction between aptitude and achievement, see his unpublished correspondence with Henry Chauncey,
president of ETS, as cited in Robert Hampel, The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools Since 1940
(Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 61-65 and notes.
105 James B. Conant, The American High School Today: A First Report to Interested Citizens (New York,
McGraw-Hill, 1959), 37-38, 80-85: "I should like to record at this point my conviction that in many states
the number one problem is the elimination of the small high school by district reorganization," 38 (Italics
in original.)
106 ibid., 44-46
107 ibid., 55-63
108 James B. Conant, The Child, the Parent, and the States (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,
1959), 35-43
109 ibid., 53
110 Hampel, op cit., 59
111 For two idiosyncratic but revealing versions of this dissatisfaction, see George Will, "Freedom to Learn,"
in Newsweek, May 29, 1978; and Aaron Latham, "Life in a Co-Ed Animal House" in Esquire, February 27,
1979.
112 George H. Gallup, "The 13th Annual Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools", Phi
Delta Kappan, September, 1981
113 See, for example, John L. Goodlad, A Place Called School (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1984); Sara
Lawrence Lightfoot, The Good High School (New York, Basic Books, 1985); Theodore Sizer, Horace's
Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1984); Ernest L.
Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, High School: A Report on Secondary
Education in America (New York, Harper and Row, 1983); and Arthur Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David
K. Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace (Boston,
Houghton Mifflin, 1985). For a commentary on all of the above, see Walter Karp, "Why Johnny Can't Think: The
Politics of Bad Schooling," Harper's, June, 1986, 69-73; Harold Howe II, "Education Moves to Center
Stage: An Overview of Recent Studies," Phi Delta Kappan, April, 1984, 538-541; and A. Harry Passow,
"Tackling the Reform Reports of the 1980's," Phi Delta Kappan, June, 1984, 674-683.
114 Mortimer Adler on Behalf of the Members of the Paideia Group, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational
Manifesto (New York, Macmillan, 1982), 3
115 ibid., 4
116 ibid., quoting R. M. Hutchins, without specific citation.
117 Ibid., 15
118 ibid., 9
119 ibid., 7
120 ibid., Chapter 4, 21-36
121 Mortimer Adler, Padeia Problems and Possibilities (New York, Macmillan, 1983) and The Paideia
Program (New York, Macmillan, 1985)
122 See, for example, Chester E. Finn, Diane Ravitch, and Holley Roberts, editors, Challenge to the
Humanities (New York, Holmes and Meier, 1985); and Lynne Cheney, "50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for
College Students," Humanities, the publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities,
November/December, 1989, 4-10
123 For a synthesis of responses, see "The Paideia Proposal: A Symposium," Harvard Educational Review,
November 1983, 377-411.
124 Diane Ravitch, "Why Educators Resist a Basic Required Curriculum," in Beatrice and Ronald Gross, The
Great School Debate, op cit., 199-203
125 The National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational
Reform (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, April, 1983), 5
126 ibid., 24-31
127 See, for example, Paul Peterson, "Did the Education Commissions Say Anything?" Brookings Review
(Vol. 2, 1983), 4-11; and Joel Spring, "Education and the Sony War," Phi Delta Kappan (April, 1984), 534-537
128 Russell Kirk, The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written On The Sky (Washington, D.C.,
Regnery Gateway, 1987), Chapter 5
129 Annette Kirk, "Reflections on 'A Nation at Risk'", in Russell Kirk, editor, The University Bookman
(Vol. 28, 4, 1988), 14-16