Adler

Mortimer Jerome Adler was the philosopher that I chose. Thinking that I have heard this name before, I knew that this could not be that hard. But come to realize that this was not going to be an easy task. What I thought I knew about this man, well that I knew nothing about him. As I found out Adler had a great impact on my education as I know now. I have always thought as modern philosophers as very stock up in their way, but as I keep on reading about his life in my research, I can see that Adler was not a stock up man but, a very caring and realistic person.

Mortimer Jerome Adler was born on December 28, 1902 in N.Y.C. His father was immigrant jewelry salesman. One of the biggest mile stone I think that he had was that he drops out of school when he was only 14 years old. After that he got a job as secretary and a copy boy at the New York Sun, while he was there Adler was introduce to journalist. Hoping to be a journalist he went to school at Columbian University and took night classes seeing if he could improve his writing. While he took classes he read an autobiography of John Stuart Mill (an English economist and philosopher.) Adler was amazed that Mill had read Plato when he was at the age of 5 and at the age of 14 he had already wrote and edited numerous books by then, just knowing that he himself had not read Plato yet. Form that he decided that he was going to study and work on his own philosophy. As his study through the years at the University he became so involve with his studies that he failed his Physical Education classes which was a required class to graduate. So for that he could not receive his bachelor's degree. But the University still gave him a doctorate in philosophy, also a few years later he was awarded his undergraduate degree. After school he found him self teaching at the same University that he graduated form and was teaching philosophy. He had also tough at the University of Chicago. Not just was he a professor but, also was a very fames author, which had written in a life time 60 books. But for most of his life he had devoted himself to education and humanities. In the mid-80s he had to 3 books which was a project called Paideia Project that he had written about education, The Paideia Proposal: An Education Manifesto, Paideia Problems and Possibilities, and the Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus.

"No one can be fully educated in school, no matter how long the schooling or how good it is." That is one of Adler's fames philosophy about the way he thought that education is and will be. But not just that was the main one. One that stands out the most is in his Paideia Project. The word paideia is Greek which means education or raising children. With this in mind the project was made simple with just a few electives, these would divide classroom actions and levels in to 3 proportions: gaining of information, couching the student by teachers, and give-and-take of Socratic questioning. All these steps lead to critical thinking skills. The first of the dimensions' gaining of information; the teacher would do as she would give them the lesson or the topic information, so the student will know what the lesson is going to be about. Second dimension is couching the student by teachers; the teacher would be a couch to the student by first sating the information and then ask the question or use something to make the student think about what they have just learned to make then understand better the topic. Last dimension give-and-take of Socratic questioning; it's know that one Socrates way of finding the absolute truth is by questioning every thing that he learn and see to see the point or the truth in everything, so by knowing this the educator would tell then that not question what they just learned, but not just that but to questions topics of