T H E G R E A T I D E A S O N L I N E

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Oct 00 Center for the Study of The Great Ideas #106
Justice and freedom; discussion and criticism;
intelligence and characterthese are the indispensable
ingredients of the democratic state.
We can be rich and powerful without them.
But not for long. --Robert M. Hutchins
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ONLY ADULTS CAN BE EDUCATED
Max Weismann interviews Mortimer Adler (1995)
Mortimer Adler was a high school dropout at age 15; yet
for more than 60 years his name has been synonymous with
educationteaching and learning. Now at 93 years of age he
persists in exhorting us to understand the distinction between
schooling and education, as well as, the importance of our
lifelong obligation to continued liberal learning.
Before we begin, in all fairness I should point out that
subsequent to dropping out of high school and following a
series of events, too lengthy to recount here, he became (I
suspect) the only person in this country ever to receive a
Ph.D. without a high school diploma, a bachelors degree, or
a masters degree.
I am honored to bring you this insightful interview on
the Great Idea of Education with my dear friend, mentor,
colleague, philosopher, teacher, author, and high school
dropout.

WEISMANN: William F. Buckley, J r. on his television

show Firing Line, once introduced you as Our nations
pedagogue; yet even with that appellation and your long
career in education, I have heard you say that schooling is
not education. This is at least a very provocative statement,
particularly today when all over America parents are
screaming about the poor education their children are
receiving in schools. Please explain and help us to understand
what you mean by that statement?
ADLER: I am going to begin my answer with an even more
provocative statement, or should I say fact, and that is
only adults can be educated. So before I answer your
question, we must first discuss adult education.
Let me explain. The word education has come to have
so restricted a connotation that it is misleading. When most
people think of education, they tend to think of the
development of their children, not of their own development;
they think of learning in school, not outside of school. A
serious result of this is that the phrase adult education is
generally misunderstood. Because we think of education as
something done primarily with the young and in school,
adult education comes to be a queer kind of thing, some-
thing which you usually think of, if you think of it at all, as
for the other person, not yourself.
In years of thinking and working in the field of
education, the insight that I am going to try to communicate
to you is one which is basic to the whole theory of education.
It not only changes our conception of what should go on in
the schools, and what should be done with children, but it
also changes our conception of what each adult must do for
himself to sustain his own life of learning.
I can hardly remember what I used to think when I had
the mistaken notion that the schools were the most important
part of the educational process; for now I think exactly the
reverse. I am now convinced that it is adult education which
is the substantial and major part of the educational process
the part for which all the rest is at bestand it is at its best
only when it isa preparation.
WEISMANN: We know only too well that words can be
mischievous and treacherous. Those of us who are engaged in
adult education have been thinking for some time of how to
avoid using the words adult education, because in the
minds of the general public they have such an unfortunate
connotation. How can we correct this misconception?
ADLER: You are quite correct about words, and if by
issuing an edict, I could get everybody to use words the way
I would like them to, I would try to set up the following
usage: use schooling to signify the development and
training of the young; and education (without the word
adult attached to it) to signify the learning done by mature
men and women. Then we could say that after schooling,
real education, not adult education, begins. This is my main
point.
WEISMANN: From my own long experience I am sadly
aware of the misconceptions in the minds of almost everybody
which prevents this basic proposition from being understood.
Would you indicate for us the major misconceptions that must
be rectified.
ADLER: Most of us, and most professional educators, hold
a false view of schooling. It consists in the notion that it is
the aim or purpose of the schoolsand I use the word
schools to include all levels of institutional education from
the kindergarten to the college and universityto turn out
educated men and women, their education completed or
finished when they are awarded a degree or diploma.
Nothing could be more absurd or preposterous. This means
that young peoplechildren of twenty or twenty-twoare to
be regarded as educated men and women. We all know, and
no one can deny, that no childin school or at the moment
of graduationis an educated person.
WEISMANN: Yet it seems this is the apparent aim of the
whole school systemto give a complete education. At least
this is the current conception which governs the construction
of the curriculum and the conduct or administration of the
school system; it is also the conception of most parents who
send their children to schools and colleges.
ADLER: That is correct. This error about education being
completed in school is widespread, as shown by the fact that
most of us also hold a false view of adult education. I held
it myself for many years. We think of adult education as
something for the underprivileged, some poor people who
were deprived in youth of schooling by economic circum-
stance or hardships. Perhaps they were foreigners who came
to this country under difficult circumstances. Deprived of the
normal amount of schooling, these people in later life, while
they are working all day to support a family, go to night
school to make up for their lack of schooling in youth. Night
schooling or remedial schoolingto compensate for lack of
sufficient schooling in youthis, for a great many people,
the essence of adult education. When they think of it in this
way, theythe majority who are more fortunate conclude
that adult education is not for them, but only for the
unfortunate few who lacked sufficient schooling in youth.
WEISMANN: Another false and very misleading notion
about adult education is that it is something you can take or
leave because it really is an avocation, a hobby that occupies
a little of your spare time, something a little better than card
games or television. On this level, adult education consists of
classes in basket weaving, or folk dancing, or clay modeling
things of that sort. Even lectures about current events are
of that sort.
Arent these all wrong notionswrong notions of the
meaning of what schooling is or should be, and wrong
notions of what fundamental education for adults should be?
What is your prescription to correct these misconceptions?
ADLER: Perhaps the easiest way for me to correct these
errors is to state the contrary truth, and tell you what every
schoolboy does not know. Every schoolboy or girl,
particularly at the moment of graduation from school, does
not know how much he does not knowand how much he
has to learn.
WEISMANN: Yes, but as this is perfectly natural, the
children are not to be blamed for it, are they?
ADLER: Of course not, this is one of the natural blindnesses
of youth. There is hardly an intelligent adulta college
graduate two or three years out of collegewho will not
readily and happily confess frankly that he is not an educated
person, that there is much more for him to learn, and that he
does not know it all. If we should find a college graduate
three years out of college who does not know he needs an
education, charity would recommend that we speak no more
of him.
WEISMANN: I wonder how the college graduate, two,
three, or five years out of college, who recognizes the fact
that he was not educated, or that his education or training
was far from complete in all the years of schooling, explains
that fact?
ADLER: He usually has one or another incorrect
explanation. If he is a gentle and generous person, he is
likely to say, The fault was mine. I went to a good school.
The curriculum was good. I had a fine set of teachers. The
library facilities and all the other conditions in my formal
schooling were excellent; but I wasted my time. I played
cards or took the girls out, or went in for extracurricular
activities, or something else interfered with my studies. If
only I had studied, I would now be an educated person.
This, I assure you, is quite wrong. But, at the opposite
extreme, there is the person who is equally wrong. He is less
generous. He puts the blame on somebody else. He says, It
was the schools fault. The teachers were no good; it was a
bad curriculum; in general the facilities were poor. If all
these had been better, I would now be educated.
This opposite extreme is equally incorrect. The truth can
be expressed only by what may seem to you for a moment to
be an extreme or outrageous statement. But I must make it.
Consider the brightest boy or girl at the best imaginable
collegemuch better than any which now existswith the
most competent faculty and with a perfect course of study.
Imagine this brightest student in the best of all possible
colleges spending four years industriously, faithfully, and
efficiently applying his or her mind to study. I say to you
that at the end of four years, this student, awarded a degree
with the highest honors, is not an educated man or woman,
and cannot be, for the simple reason that the obstacle to
becoming educated in school is an inherent and insur-
mountable one, namely, youth.
WEISMANN: You say that the young cannot be educated,
youth being the obstacle. Why is this so?
ADLER: We should know the answer almost as soon as we
ask the question. What do we mean by young people? What
are children? In answer to your question, I use the word
children for all human beings still under institutional care.
I do not care what their chronological age is, whether it is
fifteen or eighteen or twenty-two. If they are still within the
walls of a school, college, or university, they are children.
They are living a protected, and in many ways an artificial,
life.
I repeat, what does it mean to be a child? What is our
conception of being a child? It is obviously a conception of
human life at a stage when it is right to be irresponsible to a
certain degree. Childhood is a period of irresponsibility. In
addition to being irresponsible, the child or young person,
precisely because he is protected or safeguarded, is greatly
deficient in experience. Most or all of the things that make us
adults or mature occur after we leave school. The business of
getting married, of having children, of having our parents
become ill, or dependent on us, or die, the death of our
friends, our business and social responsibilitiesthese are the
things that age us. And aging is a part of what makes us
mature. We cannot be mature without being aged through
pain and suffering and grief. This kind of suffering children
are spared, but they pay a price for being spared it. They
remain immature, irresponsible, and unserious, in the basic
sense of that word.
Let me indicate this in still another way. Teachers in
colleges and universities have had the experience of having,
in the same classroom, the returned GI, from military service
continuing his education on the GI Bill of Rights, and
ordinary boys and girls right out of high school. The
difference between those two groups of students in the same
classroom is like the difference between night and day. The
actual ages are not too far apartsometimes the GI is hardly
more than a year or two older than the boy sitting next to
him. But the one is a man and the other is a child. And the
difference between a man and a child is a difference wrought
by experience, by hard knocks. It cannot be produced by
schooling.
WEISMANN: Does it follow, then, that precisely because
they are immature, understandably irresponsible, not serious,
and lack a great deal of experience, children in school are
not educable?
ADLER: Yes. However, I do not mean they are not
trainable. In fact, they are much more trainable than we are.
As we get older, our nervous system becomes much less
plastic. It is much harder for us to learn languages, much
harder for us to learn shorthand, for example, or ice-skating.
The child, in all matters of simple habit formation, is much
more trainable than the adult, but the adult is much more
educable, because education is not primarily a matter of
training or habit formation. Though these are preparations
for it, education in its essence is the cultivation of the human
mind. Education consists in the growth of understanding,
insight, and ultimately some wisdom. These growths require
mature soil. Only in mature soil, soil rich with experience
the soul in the mature personcan ideas really take root.
WEISMANN: When you say adults are more educable than
children, are you really saying that adults can think better
than children?
ADLER: Yes, and I hope that our readers believe that this is
so, because if they do not, then adults ought to stay away
from the polls and send their children there instead. But if
you really believeas I certainly do without embarrassment
or hesitationthat you can think better than a child, then you
must also realize that you are more educable than a child.
Basic learningthe acquisition of ideas, insight, under-
standingdepends on being able to think. If adults can think
better than children, they can also learn betterlearn better
in the fundamental sense of cultivating their minds.
WEISMANN: How would you respond to the person who
may suppose that this is a novel educational insight: this
insistence that education belongs to the mature, and
schooling, at the level of training and habit formation, to the
young?
ADLER: I would reply that except for our own century, all
the great periods of Western culture have recognized and
acted on the simple basic truth I have stated as my central
thesis. If we go back to the Greeks, for example, I think I
can show you in the works of the two great thinkers of
antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, the presence of this funda-
mental insight.
In Platos Republic he outlines the ideal education of the
best men to govern the ideal state. The course of study is as
follows. Listen to its time schedule. From the beginning until
the student reaches the age of twenty, the curriculum is
confined to music and gymnastics. Here music stands for the
cultivation of the sensibilities and imagination; and gym-
nastics stands for the acquisition of all the basic bodily
coordinations. Between the ages of twenty and thirty there
occurs training in the liberal arts, particularly the arts of
mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music),
and the basic arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Then, at
the age of thirty, the young person goes out into the world.
He leaves the academy and undertakes civic duties or public
responsibilities, thus becoming a little more mature. He
returns to the academy at thirty-five, for the study of
philosophy, or the contemplation of ideas. And this continues
until the age of fifty, when his formal education is com-
pleted. Here is a time schedule which recognizes how slowly
the processes of education take place and how maturity is
required before the understanding of ideas can occur.
There is another indication of this in the opening
chapters of Aristotles Ethics. He points out that you can
train the characters of young men, you can form the moral
virtues in them by reward and punishment, but, he says, you
cannot teach them ethical principles. You cannot teach them
ethical theory because they are immature. Lacking moral and
political experience, being more or less under the influence
of wayward passions, they cannot possibly understand moral
and political principles, nor are they in a position to make
sound judgments on moral questions. Think of how we
violate this insight in our schools today. One of the major
subjects for the young, soon after kindergarten, is social
studies. Aristotle would not have thought it possible to teach
these to young children because to understand the theory of
society requires mature experience and judgment.
Perhaps I can communicate my basic insight by a
reference to my own biography. When I went to Columbia
College, and read the great books under an extraordinarily
fine teacher, J ohn Erskine, I read them very studiously. I
thought I knew what they were about. I thought I understood
them perfectly. To show you how young I was, let me tell
you two things about myself. I recall quite clearly what my
reaction was to Plato and Aristotle the first time I read the
passages I have just reported to you. I was quite sure Plato
was wrong that one could not understand ideas until after
thirty-five or forty. He must be wrong, because there I was,
at twenty, doing it. And Aristotle must be wrong that ethics
could not be taught to young men. There I was, a young man
who thoroughly understood the principles of Aristotles great
book on Ethics.
I now know how silly I was at the age of twenty. I was
fortunate enough to have to read again and again in the
course of the next sixty-five years the same books I read in
college. This experience of reading these books over and
over again, during years when I was growing up a little,
taught me how much such growth, through experience and
living, is required for the understanding of the Great Ideas
found in the Great Books. I have often looked at old lecture
notes, or at notes written some years earlier in preparation
for leading Great Books discussions. I realize then how far I
have come. It is not that I have grown more intelligent, but
simply that my capacity for understanding has changed,
deepened a little, as a result of the intervening experience.
WEISMANN: Suppose that everything you have said is so.
Suppose we agree with you that schooling should consist
largely in the training of good habits in the young, and that
education is principally learning by adults who are mature
human beings. What are the consequences of this
proposition?
ADLER: I think that they are very radical indeed, so radical
that it would take almost an educational revolution to put
them into effect. If it is true that education is primarily a
matter for adults, then what we do when we send our
children to school, how we understand why we are sending
them there, what we do about ourselves after school, and
how we understand the necessity for us to continue learning
all these things would follow.
WEISMANN: If I understand what you are saying, adult
education, or education for adults, is necessary for all adults,
not just for those who suffered deprivation in youth through
lack of this or that part of formal schooling. It is not a matter
of what is necessary for the other fellow; it is a matter which
each of us must face for himself.
ADLER: That is correct. Let me now divide the con-
sequences of this proposition into two parts: first, the
consequences for the school system; and second, for adults.
I should like, first, to make a few remarks as background
for the consideration of the reforms which should take place
in the school system. I assume, without any argument at all,
that we are committed to a democratic society, a democratic
government, and democratic institutions. And I assume with-
out argument that you understand this to mean acceptance of
the basic truth about human equality, which expresses itself
in the political principle of universal suffrage. What
distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government
is the extension of the franchise to all citizens, men and
women, without regard to race, creed, or color. The only just
limitations on universal suffrage involve the exclusion of
infants and children, the mentally incompetent, and criminals
who have forfeited their political rights by acts of moral
turpitude. No one else is justly excluded according to a
democratic conception of government. The educational con-
sequence of this political principle is that all children must go
to school. Education must be universal and com-pulsory
because, in a democracy, all children must be trained for
citizenship. This means, I say, building enough schools and
finding enough teachers to take care of the whole population
of future citizens in our democratic society.
WEISMANN: We almost have succeeded in doing this in
this country. We seem to have, in the course of this century,
recognized the educational obligations of a democratic
society. We have built a tremendous number of schools and
trained a vast horde of teachers. We have poured great funds
of taxpayers money into school budgets.
ADLER: That is satisfactory as far as it goes, but it does not
go nearly far enough. If you have children in school, or
know anything about what is going on in most of the schools
today, public or private, you will know that most of the
children are not being democratically educated. Most of the
childrenI think I can even safely say more than 75+
percentare, in fact, being given almost no education at all.
They are being given vocational training. Vocational training
is training for work or for the life of the slave. It is not the
education of the future citizen, of the free man who has
leisure to use. Liberal education, as distinguished from
vocational training, is education for freedom, and this means
that it is education for the responsibilities of citizenship and
for the good use of leisure.
WEISMANN: What do you mean by the good use of
leisure?
His answer, and the conclusion in the next issue.
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L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R
Max:
Thanks for the forward from Dr. Adler. The enclosed is an
attempt to show some of what should be considered in voting
and is necessarily brief and thus omissive. I hope that people
in this country will vote with an informed opinion and truly
attempt to make the right choice.
Bob Heller
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ELECTIONS AND YOUR INTEREST
(an opinion from Robert G. Heller)
The upcoming Presidential election presents a focal point to
enumerate a few things to consider in voting. This is in no
way an attempt to influence anyones vote. It is an attempt to
encourage everyone to vote in an informed way. Of
necessity, this will be brief and incomplete but hopefully you
will look deeper into what concerns you.
Politics is not a dirty word or profession. Admittedly,
there have been and will be people that are unfit and
unworthy of the trust given to them. All in all, however, we
Americans have one of the best, if not the best, political
processes in the world and we need to protect it by our
choices and our participation in it.
Government. Where does it come from, why does it
exist, and why is it necessary? Many questions are asked
about government and these are but a few. Most basically,
government exists to look after the common good. The
authority and power to do this is, particularly in our
American Democracy, delegated from the people to the
rulers. There is the consent of the governed to submit to and
be governed by a just authority and power. Government of
the people, for the people, and by the people, as Lincoln
said. The power and authority to govern comes from the
people. This is quite a reversal from many other forms of
governing where the authority was thought to come from
higher up and the rulers looked upon as gods, or it was
merely seized and exercised ruthlessly. This exists in the
world today. I readily admit there are many other types and
areas that can be covered but space does not permit.
One constant refrain in American politics at all levels is
whether government is too intrusive or not expansive
enough. As has been said; the devil is in the details. Most all
of us have said at one time or another about something:
There ought to be a law. How can this seemingly un-
solvelable dilemma be resolved? For a possible solution I
refer you to Thomas J efferson who said; The government
that governs the best, governs the least.
Former Speaker of the House, Tip ONeill said All
politics is local. Tip may have been correct but we all have
a commonality of interest. We express that interest by
registering to vote and intelligently exercising that right. We
should not be easily swayed to cast away a vote instead of
casting a vote. Those who do not register and vote informed
are worse off than those who are unable to vote.
A considered vote for an individual running for office
requires the electorate to determine the interests best
represented by the candidate. Also, the voter need consider if
the interest of the voter is the primary consideration, or if the
interest of the local community, State, or nation, is the
primary consideration. In other words, does the common
interest outweigh the individual or regional interest or is
there an acceptable midpoint? Are we at least willing to
weigh interests not our own? If there are issues involved,
such as taxes, bonds, roads, airports, drainage, etc. then you
as a voter must decide how to weigh the various interests
involved, since there will be many local elections on the
ballot in most areas.
In evaluating all the statements, promises and goals being
made by the candidates for various offices, consider whether
the office being sought actually possesses the power and
authority to fulfill what is being said. We have a tripartate
and complex government of separate but equal branches.
Consider if what is being presented doesnt wholly or
partially belong to another branch of government. President
J ohn Kennedy said, Success has many fathers, but failure is
an orphan. Keep this in mind as you evaluate the successes
claimed by candidates and incumbents at all levels.
Do you think that the person elected should follow the
will of the voters who elected him or her, or should the
successful candidate propose, and form public opinion? What
about the interests of those who did not vote for him or her,
or even did not vote at all? In making your choice, are you
swayed or even compelled by the media and the spin or can
you see beyond that? Are you more influenced by person-
ality, looks, expressions, etc. or is character, truth, honesty
and trust more important? Do you feel confident and
comfortable with the abilities exhibited? Leadership qualities
have been debated, discussed and diagnosed for centuries in
all parts of the world. The need for careful and vigilant
selection remains today.
The United States of America is the greatest nation ever.
It didnt happen by accident. We are first and foremost
blessed by Almighty God. That being so, we are entrusted
and obliged to care for and about the rest of the world also.
How we choose will affect the rest of the world, perhaps
more than it will effect us. We are obliged to continue to
merit Gods Blessings by the wise use of our vote. If you
also support a candidate or issue by giving, not only your
support, but your time, effort and finances, so much the
better. Keep in mind though; in the last analysis, we are
talking about opinion here, so dont let the fact that friends,
family or acquaintances may support a candidate or issue
other than what you do cause dissension. They are, after all,
entitled to their opinion by the blood of our forebears. We
need only strive to leave to our successors a better place than
we received. We are not jut voting for one person or persons.
In many ways, we are voting for a way of life. Choose
wisely.
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As always, we welcome your comments.
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