Perennialism and Education
Perennialism
Character
Conservative and inflexible educational philosophy.
Cultivation of intellect
Humans are rational beings, and their minds need to be developed. Cultivation of the intellect is the highest priority of a worthwhile education.
Aim of education
- Students should acquire understandings about the great ideas of Western civilisation.
- These ideas have the potential for solving problems in any era.
Unchanging principles
- Education focuses on teaching ideas that are everlasting, on seeking enduring truths.
- The natural and human worlds at their most essential level do not change.
- Since the details of facts change constantly, facts cannot be the most important thing; teach principles, not facts.
Liberal vs vocational
People are people first and workers later. Liberal subjects come first; vocational subjects come later.
Teacher-centred classrooms
- Perennialist classrooms are teacher-centred to develop students’ intellectual and moral qualities through the dissemination of Western traditions.
- Teachers are not concerned about students’ personal interests or experiences.
- They use tried and tested teaching methods and techniques believed to discipline students’ minds.
- The teacher is the master of taught subjects and guides the discussion or learning process.
Perennialism is the most traditional of the four major educational theories. It claims that some truths and works are perennial: they have been and remain true across cultures and centuries, and education’s first job is to put students in serious contact with them. The label comes from this perennial character, and the theory carries strong links to Aristotle, Adler, and the realist tradition.
The perennialist character
Perennialism is, by its own self-description, a conservative and inflexible educational philosophy. The two adjectives are not pejorative in this context; they describe the theory’s commitments accurately.
Conservative: perennialism wants to conserve the inheritance of human wisdom that has accumulated over centuries. The great philosophical, literary, mathematical, and scientific works are the records of that wisdom. A school that fails to transmit them is breaking the transmission line, and the next generation inherits less than it could have.
Inflexible: perennialism does not believe the basic principles of a good education should be revised every few decades to match current fashion. The basics (intellectual cultivation, contact with great works, mastery of foundational skills) have been right for two thousand years and will continue to be right. A school that bends with each new educational trend loses the substance that perennialism is defending.
A modern educator may find these adjectives uncomfortable. They sit against the contemporary preference for openness, innovation, and adaptation. The perennialist would respond that the adjectives capture commitments worth holding, even when they are unpopular. A culture that has become embarrassed about conservation and inflexibility on this question has lost something it will need.
Conservative (wants to conserve accumulated wisdom) and inflexible (does not believe the basics should change with fashion)
Both adjectives are self-descriptions rather than pejoratives. Conservative: perennialism wants to transmit the inheritance of human wisdom; failing to do so breaks the transmission line. Inflexible: the basics (intellectual cultivation, great works, foundational skills) have been right for two thousand years and will continue to be right; a school that bends with each new trend loses the substance perennialism defends.
The cultivation of intellect
The central perennialist commitment is that humans are rational beings, and their minds need to be developed. The cultivation of the intellect is the highest priority in a worthwhile education.
The commitment goes back to Aristotle’s rational animal definition. Humans differ from other living things in their capacity for reason. The capacity is what makes them distinctively human; failing to develop it leaves them less than they could be. An education that focuses on other capacities (physical training, vocational skills, social development) at the expense of intellectual cultivation produces partial human beings.
Perennialism does not deny the value of the other capacities. It denies that they should come first. Physical training, vocational skills, social development all have their place. But they are secondary to the intellectual cultivation that develops what is distinctive about humans. A school that orders the priorities differently is, by perennialist standards, producing skilled workers, healthy bodies, or sociable adults, but not educated human beings in the strong sense.
The aim of education on this account is direct. Students should acquire understandings about the great ideas of Western civilisation. These ideas, perennialists believe, have the potential for solving problems in any era. A student who has worked through them seriously has tools that will continue to work no matter what specific problems they face in life. A student who has only learned the specifics of their own time has tools that may stop working when the time changes.
The choice of Western civilisation as the focus is a feature, not a bug, of classical perennialism. The perennialists who developed the theory in the twentieth century (Hutchins, Adler in many of his commitments) were defending the Western canon specifically. Later versions of perennialism have broadened the canon to include great works from other traditions, while keeping the underlying commitment to enduring ideas as the basis of education. The broader version is more defensible in a global age; the underlying perennialist principle survives the broadening.
Humans are rational beings and the cultivation of the intellect is the highest priority of a worthwhile education
The commitment goes back to Aristotle’s rational animal definition. Reason is what makes humans distinctively human; failing to develop it leaves them less than they could be. Perennialism does not deny the value of physical, vocational, or social capacities; it denies that they should come first. The aim is for students to acquire understandings of the great ideas, which have the potential for solving problems in any era.
Unchanging principles
The perennialist commitment to unchanging principles is the deepest of its commitments and the one that draws the sharpest criticism. The focus, perennialists say, is to teach ideas that are everlasting: to seek enduring truths that are constant, not changing. The natural and human worlds at their most essential level do not change.
The claim is metaphysical as well as pedagogical. Perennialists believe that beneath the changing surface of historical events, technological developments, and cultural fashions, there are basic structures and truths that do not change. Human nature has fixed features. The basic moral truths have not been overturned. The fundamental questions of philosophy are still the questions Plato asked. The principles of mathematics are not products of any particular culture. The deep structure remains.
A modern reader will probably want to qualify this. Some of what perennialists treat as unchanging has, in fact, changed. The understanding of human nature has been refined by psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology in ways the classical philosophers could not anticipate. The understanding of physics, biology, and chemistry has changed dramatically. The list goes on.
The perennialist response is that what has changed is the surface, not the deep structure. The deep features of human nature (the capacity for reason, the need for community, the moral sense) have not changed even where our understanding of them has refined. The deep principles of mathematics (the validity of valid arguments, the soundness of sound proofs) have not changed even where new branches have been developed. The deep questions of philosophy (what is the good, what is truth, what is justice) are still open in the same way they were in ancient Athens.
The educational implication is sharp. Since the details of facts change constantly, perennialists argue, these cannot be the most important thing to teach. Teach principles, not facts. A student who has mastered the enduring principles can engage with new facts as they arise. A student who has only memorised facts has a body of content that becomes obsolete and leaves them adrift when the world moves on.
Details of facts change constantly but principles endure; a student who masters principles can engage with new facts, but a student with only memorised facts is left adrift when the world moves on
The claim rests on the metaphysical view that beneath changing surface events there are basic structures and truths that do not change. The strongest version of this metaphysics is contested by modern science and history, but the pedagogical lesson survives even in weaker forms: a curriculum overweighted toward specific facts and underweighted toward principles leaves students with content that becomes obsolete.
Liberal first, vocational later
Perennialism’s curricular priorities are direct. People are people first and workers later. Therefore one must teach liberal subjects first and vocational subjects later.
The reasoning depends on the previous claims. If the cultivation of intellect is the highest priority, and the great ideas of the tradition are how that cultivation happens, then liberal subjects (philosophy, literature, mathematics, history, foundational science) come first. Vocational subjects (specific job training, technical skills) come later, on top of the liberal foundation.
The order matters. A student who has received a liberal education first and a vocational training second has a foundation that lets them adapt as their work changes through life. A student who has received only vocational training has skills that may become obsolete and no foundation for re-developing themselves. The order, perennialists argue, is the difference between an educated worker and a skilled worker who is unprepared for change.
This priority differs from many modern school systems, which run vocational and liberal preparation in parallel or even prefer vocational where it is in tension with liberal. The perennialist would call these systems backwards: the priority is reversed in a way that produces graduates who are competent in one role but unprepared for life as full human beings.
The position survives criticism in a weakened form even when its full classical statement is not accepted. Even a modern educator who wants vocational preparation to be central can accept that some liberal foundation is necessary for full adulthood, and that an education with no liberal component at all leaves graduates underprepared in important ways.
Liberal subjects come first because people are people first and workers later
A student who receives a liberal education first has a foundation that lets them adapt as their work changes through life. A student who receives only vocational training has skills that may become obsolete and no foundation for re-developing. The order is the difference between an educated worker and a skilled worker unprepared for change. Most modern school systems reverse this priority, which perennialists treat as a failure.
The teacher-centred classroom
The final perennialist commitment is structural. Perennialist classrooms are teacher-centred. The teacher’s job is to develop the students’ intellectual and moral qualities through the dissemination of Western traditions. The teachers are not particularly concerned about the students’ personal interests or experiences; the curriculum and the methods are not adjusted to fit them. The teacher uses tried and tested methods believed to discipline the students’ minds, and is considered a master of the subjects taught who guides the discussion or the learning process.
The contrast with progressive classrooms is sharp. A progressive classroom is student-centred: the student’s interests, experiences, and choices shape the work. A perennialist classroom is teacher-centred: the teacher’s mastery and the curriculum’s content shape the work, and the student’s job is to absorb what is given.
The perennialist defends this structure on several grounds. The student does not yet know what they need to learn; the teacher does. The student’s interests are often shaped by passing fashion; the curriculum’s content is shaped by lasting wisdom. The student left to follow their interests will gravitate toward the easy and the immediately rewarding; the teacher can guide them toward the difficult and the deeply rewarding.
A modern reader, especially one shaped by the progressive tradition, will probably find this picture authoritarian. The perennialist would push back: authority used well is not authoritarianism. A teacher who knows their subject and cares about their students can use the authority to shape an education that the students would not have shaped for themselves and that is better for them in the end. The alternative, the perennialist says, is to leave students at the mercy of whatever currents their own underdeveloped judgement happens to be in.
The honest middle position is the one most modern educators end up in. The teacher-centred and student-centred orientations both contain truth; a teacher who can hold both in mind can teach better than one committed to either extreme. The perennialist commitment to teacher mastery and disciplined content survives, as does the progressive commitment to student agency and engagement. The combination is hard but is what most actual successful teaching turns out to look like.
Because the teacher knows what the student needs to learn and can guide them toward the difficult and deeply rewarding work the student would not have chosen alone
The student does not yet know what they need to learn; the teacher does. The student’s interests are often shaped by passing fashion; the curriculum’s content is shaped by lasting wisdom. The student left to follow their interests gravitates toward the easy and immediately rewarding; the teacher guides them toward the difficult and deeply rewarding. Authority used well, the perennialist argues, is not authoritarianism.
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