Teaching, the Instructor, and the Institutions
Adler: Teaching, Teachers, and Colleges
Method per column
- Teaching uses textbooks, manuals, and the didactic method.
- Learning uses coaching aimed at developing intellectual skills.
- Understanding uses Socratic questioning and discussion.
The learning process
- Learning must be active and use the whole mind, not just memory.
- Learning by discovery, with the student as the primary agent.
- The teacher’s role is to aid the discovery, not to install their own knowledge in the student’s mind.
The quality of teaching
- Quality depends primarily on how the teacher conceives their role in the learning process.
- Adler said the existing schools of education would not produce the kind of teachers the Paideia programme needed.
- The teachers currently trained for teaching, he wrote, simply will not do.
What to look for in a teacher
- Truly educated human beings.
- Actively engaged in becoming more truly educated.
How teachers should be trained
- The same basic schooling proposed in the Paideia Proposal.
- Additional schooling at the college or university level.
- Advanced learning in university through the same kind of general and liberal curriculum.
- Supervised practice teaching.
- Direct exposure to the work of masters in the art of teaching.
Three kinds of college
- Two-year community or junior college: a wide choice of electives in specialised fields, mainly oriented to earning a living.
- Four-year college (variant 1): electives for professional and technical occupations, accompanied by a required minor in continued general/liberal education.
- Four-year college (variant 2): required general and liberal education at a higher level for all students. This is the institution future basic-school teachers must attend.
The three columns determine what is taught. The next questions are how each column is taught, who is doing the teaching, and where the teachers are trained. Adler has detailed answers to each, and the answers are as demanding for the teaching profession as the Paideia Proposal was for the schools.
Methods matched to columns
Each of the three columns calls for a different teaching method. A school that uses one method everywhere is using the wrong method in two of three contexts. Adler is direct about the matching.
For Column 1 (teaching), the method is the didactic one. The teacher uses textbooks and manuals to deliver organised knowledge in the three subject areas. The student receives the information, takes notes, works through exercises. The teacher’s authority comes from knowing the material and presenting it clearly.
For Column 2 (learning), the method is coaching. The teacher’s authority comes from being able to demonstrate the skill and to recognise good and bad performance in the student. The student practises the skill repeatedly under the coach’s eye until it becomes habitual.
For Column 3 (understanding), the method is Socratic questioning and discussion. The teacher leads the student through a serious text or work by asking questions that the student has to think through. The teacher’s authority comes from being able to ask the right question at the right moment rather than from already having the answer.
A teacher in a Paideia school therefore needs three different competencies, one for each column. They have to know the subject matter well enough to teach it directly. They have to demonstrate the skills well enough to coach them. They have to read the great works deeply enough to lead discussion of them. This is more than most teacher-training programmes prepare a teacher to do. The Paideia Proposal’s view is that more is what teachers need.
Didactic for Column 1, coaching for Column 2, Socratic discussion for Column 3
For teaching (organised knowledge): the didactic method, using textbooks and manuals. For learning (intellectual skills): coaching, with repeated practice and feedback. For understanding (ideas and values): Socratic questioning and discussion of serious works. A teacher in a Paideia school needs all three competencies; using one method everywhere is using the wrong method in two of three contexts.
How learning happens
Adler is direct about what makes learning succeed. Learning must be active and use the whole mind, not just memory. Learning is by discovery, with the student as the primary agent. The teacher’s role is to aid the discovery, not to install their own knowledge in the student’s mind.
This is the same student-centred picture that runs back through Rousseau and Plato. Adler restates it in twentieth-century terms. The student does the learning. The teacher creates the conditions and helps where needed, but the active work belongs to the student. A teacher who tries to do the learning for the student is misunderstanding what teaching is.
Quality of teaching, Adler writes, depends primarily on how the teacher conceives their role in the process of learning. The biggest variable is not the curriculum, the building, or the equipment. It is the picture the teacher carries in their head of what they are there to do. A teacher whose mental picture is I am here to deliver content into the students’ heads will teach one way. A teacher whose picture is I am here to help the students do their own learning will teach another. The two ways produce different students.
Adler made a famously sharp criticism of the existing teacher-training schools. The schools of education as currently constituted, he said, would not produce the teachers the Paideia programme needed. Teachers as currently trained for teaching, he wrote bluntly, simply will not do. The criticism was directed at the way teacher-training programmes treated teaching as a set of techniques for transmitting content rather than as the work of educating a human being.
How the teacher conceives their role in the learning process
Not the curriculum, the building, or the technology. The picture the teacher carries in their head of what they are there to do. A teacher whose mental picture is deliver content will teach one way; a teacher whose picture is help the student do their own learning will teach another. The two ways produce different students.
What to look for in a teacher
The Paideia Proposal needs teachers who are themselves educated. Adler’s criteria are short.
The first is that the teacher should be a truly educated human being. Not just credentialed. Not just trained in pedagogical techniques. Educated in the Paideia sense: someone whose own life has been shaped by a serious encounter with the great works and the major intellectual traditions. A teacher who has not been educated in this sense cannot give what they have not received.
The second is that the teacher should be actively engaged in becoming more truly educated. Education does not end with the teacher-training programme. A serving teacher should still be reading, still discussing, still extending their own understanding. A teacher whose own learning stopped at graduation has been frozen at an early stage of the lifelong process Adler describes. They have nothing to model for their students of what it looks like to keep learning.
The criteria are demanding. They sit in some tension with the realities of teacher recruitment in any country. There are not enough deeply educated people in any society to staff every classroom with one. Adler’s response would be that the proposal is aspirational and that the right move is to design teacher training to produce more such people, even if the current pipeline cannot supply them in full numbers immediately.
The proposed training itself has five elements. The future teacher receives the same basic schooling as proposed in the Paideia Proposal (general liberal education from pre-K through grade 12). They then receive additional schooling at the college or university level. The advanced learning is in the same kind of general and liberal curriculum, not a separate vocational track for teachers. They engage in supervised practice teaching, learning the craft by doing it under guidance. And they are exposed to the work of masters in the art of teaching, so they can see what good teaching looks like in operation rather than only reading about it.
A truly educated human being, actively engaged in becoming more truly educated
The teacher should be educated in the sense of having had a serious encounter with the great works and the major intellectual traditions. The teacher should also still be learning, still reading, still extending their own understanding. A teacher whose own learning stopped at graduation cannot model what lifelong learning looks like, and a teacher who has not been deeply educated cannot give what they have not received.
Three kinds of college
The proposal extends past basic schooling into the design of post-secondary institutions. Adler proposes three kinds of college, each with a different role.
The first is the two-year community or junior college. This institution should offer a wide choice of electives that give students some training in one or another specialised field, mainly those fields that relate directly to earning a living. The community college is, in this picture, primarily a vocational institution. It serves students who want short, focused training in a trade or technical occupation.
The second is a four-year college of the first variant. This institution should offer a variety of electives for students aiming at professional or technical occupations that require advanced studies. Important: these elective majors should be accompanied by one required minor in which the general and liberal education from basic schooling continues. A four-year graduate of this variant has both specialised preparation for their chosen profession and continued contact with the general liberal education that prepared them for a full adult life.
The third is a four-year college of the second variant. At this institution, general and liberal education at a higher level is a required course of study taken by all students. There are no electives in the sense of an alternative track; everyone takes the same demanding liberal-arts curriculum. This is the institution that must be attended, Adler insists, by all who plan to become teachers in the basic schools.
The reasoning is direct. A teacher needs the deepest general education available, because they will be delivering the foundation of that education to children for thirty years. A teacher who has skipped the general education in favour of specialised training has missed the very thing they are supposed to transmit. The Paideia Proposal therefore reserves the most rigorous of the three college variants for the people who will become its teachers.
The three-college system reflects the realities of differentiated post-secondary needs. Some adults want vocational training. Some want specialised professional preparation. Some want or need the deep general education. The proposal does not pretend everyone needs the same college; it does insist that every child gets the same basic schooling first, and that the most demanding college is reserved for those whose adult work requires it most.
Two-year community, four-year electives with required minor, four-year all-required liberal
(1) Two-year community or junior college: vocational training in specialised fields tied to earning a living. (2) Four-year college (variant 1): electives in professional and technical fields, with a required minor continuing general liberal education. (3) Four-year college (variant 2): all-required general and liberal education at a higher level. The third variant is the one future basic-school teachers must attend.
How was this article?