The Proposal in Perspective

Abstract

The Paideia Proposal is the latest exchange in a debate that raged with some ferocity more than forty years ago. In the late 1930s, as progressivism became the ascendant ideology and pedagogy among professionals in schools of education, state education departments, and such influential groups as the National Education Association, critics such as Mortimer Adler, William C. Bagley, and I. L. Kandel inveighed against it. The critics, who were then known as "essentialists," believed that the version of progressivism that had triumphed in pedagogical circles put too much emphasis on differentiation of coursework among students of varying ability and interest, and unwisely denigrated the value of the common cultural and intellectual heritage.