Abstract
Adler’s bout of postmodern pessimism did not last for long. He found something of a talking cure for his listlessness by focusing on the only subject apart from philosophy that perennially motivated him: education. Through the creation of a new community of discourse, the Paideia group, he found fresh energy for a new decade of meaningful work. Adler would bring a bit of Hutchins with him into that effort—an effort that became a quest at once Quixotic, populist, and symbolic. Adler would state several times that his goal as an education reformer was to implement a Hutchins slogan, from 1953, that condensed his educational philosophy into a sentence: “The best education for the best is the best education for all.” That statement became one of the prominent introductory parts of Adler’s best-known education reform product, The Paideia Proposal.1 Hutchins, then, became a guiding light for Adler’s new community of educators in their dialogues about the field all through the 1980s.
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Notes
Mortimer J. Adler, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher at Large (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 71;
Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Education Manifesto (New York: Macmillan, 1982), 6. The slogan originated in
Hutchins, The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society (New York: Harper, 1953).
Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 11–12, 145, 181; Daniel Bell, “The Cultural Wars: American Intellectual Life, 1965–1992,” The Wilson Quarterly (Summer 1992), 79;
Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 2, 213, 215–216;
James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), chapter 8 passim. My thinking about the Culture Wars has been influenced by Andrew Hartman’s work, currently available at the U.S. Intellectual History weblog (e.g., “The Culture Wars: Notes Towards a Working Definition,” March 11, 2011) and also soon as a book tentatively titled The War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, from the Sixties to the Present (contracted with University of Chicago Press). Hartman argues against the Culture-Wars-as-distraction theses (i.e., identity obsessions, tool for political power) offered by left-liberals such as Thomas Frank, Todd Gitlin, and E. J. Dionne to Hartman the Culture Wars were a necessary adjustment mechanism in the wake of postmodernism and postindustrialism.
Zimmerman, 2–8, 214–216; Rodgers, 197; Donadio, “Canon Wars”; Patterson, 260, chapter 9 passim; Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, “Multiculturalism,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, (eds.) Immanuel Ness and Peter Bellwood (New York: Wiley, forthcoming 2013);
Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, revised (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 143–148;
Horace Kallen, Democracy versus the Melting Pot (1915);
Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, (ed.) Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Rodgers, 1–2, 7–8; Bell, 80; Patterson, 133–135, 264; Zimmerman, 180–185, 213–214; James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 43–44;
Kim Phillips-Fein, et al., “Conservatism: A State of the Field,” Journal of American History 98, no. 3 (December 2011): 723–773;
Patrick Allitt, “Ayn Rand and American Conservatism in the Cold War Era,” Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 1 (2011): 253–263; Thomas B. Edsall, “What the Right Gets Right.” New York Times: Campaign Stops Blog, January 15, 2012;
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945 (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996), Epilogue passim.
Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” The New Republic (June 2, 1997): 17–26; Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 32, 41–43; Tom Wolfe, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” New York Magazine (August 23, 1976), available at: http://nymag.com/ print/?/news/features/45938/index2.html. Other studies influencing my thinking on the New Right include: Nash; Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004);
Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Anchor/Doubleday books, 1991);
Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009);
Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York or Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001);
John Patrick Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992); and
Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
Phillips-Fein, 739–740; Donald Critchlow, “Rethinking American Conservatism: Toward a New Narrative,” Journal of American History 98, no. 3 (December 2011): 752–755. See also Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore’s “long exception” argument about mid-century liberalism in International Labor and Working-Class History (Fall 2008): 74.
Bell, 79–83, 86–89; Rodgers, 7, 82–85, 182–185, 197; Patterson, 257–259, 264; Lawrence Peter King and Iván Szelényi, Theories of the New Class: Intellectuals and Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), vii–xii, xxi–xxii. Bell argues for at least three sides to the Culture Wars: Radical (i.e., Left), Liberal (i.e., moderate Left), and Conservative.
Rodgers, 10–11, 20, 98, 180–181, 257; Patterson, 303; Bell, 102. For more on neoliberalism, see David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Susan Jacoby, 138–147; Rodgers, 175, 210–211; Bell, 96–102; Donadio, “Canon Wars”; Levine, Opening, 50–53, 344–347; Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 478;
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 51, 54;
Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1983), chapter 8 passim; Richard Wrightman Fox and
T. J. Jackson Lears (eds.), The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 10.
Donadio, “Canon Wars”; Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Rodgers, 13; Mortimer J. Adler, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1977), picture inset between 274–275, 276; Stanford University, Hoover Institution Archives, Firing Line Television Program Collection (hereafter SUHIA/FLTPC), Finding Aid; Andrew Ferguson, “All Quiet on the Firing Line,” Time, December 27, 1999, 8.
Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 20–27;
Mortimer J. Adler, A Vision of the Future (New York: Macmillan, 1984), vii–viii, 1–4.
UCSC/MJAP, Box 109, Folder: “Gorman on Adler” (various letters); Mortimer J. Adler, We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution, foreword by Harry A. Blackmun (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 7–9.
Godfrey Hodgson, More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century (Princeton, NJ: The Century Foundation/Princeton University Press, 2004), 241–245;
Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 23–24; Patterson, 33–37, 239, 239, n.46; Ravitch, 255, 311–312, 326; Schulman, 140–141. Two recent graduate textbooks that characterize this period under the “reform” rubric are Pulliam and Van Patten’s History of Education in America (2003, eighth edition) and
Wayne Urban and Jennings Wagoner’s American Education: A History, second edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 2000). The “failure consensus” has been reconsidered by Diane Ravitch (in The Death and Life of the Great American School System) and others (e.g., Michael Lind, “Education Reform’s Central Myths,” Salon, August 1, 2012, available at: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/01/school_choice_vs_reality).
Department of Education, National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. An Open Letter to the American People. A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education. (Washington: Department of Education, April 1983), available at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED226006.pdf; Ravitch, Death, 17–19, 22–25, 28, 30.
Mortimer J. Adler, “Education in a Democracy: Should We Give Liberal Schooling to All, and Can We Succeed in Doing So?” American Educator 3, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 6–9;
Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876–1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 174; Adler, Second Look, 21, 71–74, 84. For more on past problems with Dewey, see Philosopher at Large.
Ibid.; Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, (ed.) Samuel Lipman, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 5.
Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1990), viii; Bennie R. Crockett, Jr., “Mortimer Adler: An Analysis and Critique of His Eclectic Epistemology” (PhD diss., University of Wales, 2000), 43–44.
UCSC/MJAP, Box 129, Folder: “Unity in a Pluralistic Society” (Adler’s lecture notes for a panel discussion with Professor Guido Calogero, University of Rome, at the America-Italy Society of San Francisco, January 15, 1957, four pages); David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 11, 93–94;
John Higham, “Multiculturalism and Universalism: A History and Critique (1993 American Quarterly),” in Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture, (ed.) Carl J. Guarneri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 230; Petrzela, “Multiculturalism.”
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, second edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 133, 147; Hollinger, Postethnic, 3–6, 55–56, 84, 102–103; Higham, “Multiculturalism,” 227–230; Petrzela, “Multiculturalism.” I use ideology as formulated by
John Higham in “Hanging Together: Divergent Unities in American History (1974 OAH Presidential Address),” in Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture, (ed.) Carl J. Guarneri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 7–8.
Mortimer J. Adler, Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of Questions Raised by the Paideia Proposal (New York: Macmillan, 1983), ix, 27–64.
Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus (New York: Macmillan, 1984), ix–x, 188–238.
Ibid.; William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 252, 263–270.
Michael W. Apple, Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education (New York: Routledge, 1988), 114–119, 126.
Apple, 114; UCSC/MJAP, Box 129, Folder: “St. John’s College” (Adler’s fiftieth Anniversary lecture at St. John’s, September 25, 1987); Mortimer J. Adler, A Guidebook to Learning: For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 139.
Patterson, Restless Giant, 238–240; Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876–1980, Vol. 3, (New York, New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 178, 570, n.40, 666;
Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), 147.
UCSC/MJAP, Box 123, Folder: “Bork-Wall Street Journal” (Adler to WSJ, November 2, 1987; Brennan to Adler, November 5, 1987); Mortimer J. Adler, We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution, foreword by Harry A. Blackmun (New York: Macmillan, 1987).
Gleason, Contending with Modernity (New York: Oxford Press, 1995), last chapter.
Loyola University Chicago, Women and Leadership Archives, Mundelein College Papers (hereafter LUC/WLA/MCP), Course Catalogs, 1931–1991. For more on Mundelein’s history, see Ann Harrington and Prudence Moylan (eds.), Mundelein Voices: The Women’s College Experience, 1930–1991 (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2001).
Wilfred F. Bunge, Transformed by the Journey, with Mary Hull Mohr and Dale Nimrod (Decorah, IA: Luther College Press, 2011), 161–163; Casement, “College Great Books Programs.” I have confirmed many of the entries on Casement’s list (August 10, 2012).
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© 2013 Tim Lacy
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Lacy, T. (2013). “The Poobah of Popularizers”: Paideia, Pluralism, and the Culture Wars, 1978–1988. In: The Dream of a Democratic Culture. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137042620_8
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