Thoughts on the philosophy of education

One of the perennial positions in the philosophy of education is perennialism. "Perennialism" is a valuable word for identifying the ideas behind, say, the Great Books curriculum conspicuously offered by St John's College at Annapolis.

The underlying idea is that the best idea are the ones that have lasted over centuries, because time is the great editor.

Perennialists typically set students to work reading and analyzing the works by history's finest thinkers and writers.

AT its best, this is of course very different from rote learning. One is not expected to learn medicine by memorizing the thoughts of Hippocrates and Galen. But one might well be expected to learn something valuable about science by analyzing what Hippocrates and Galen wrote, why they wrote it, what their concerns were, and so forth.

Perennialism is neither all right nor all wrong. I thought I should mention it today because I was writing about Hutchins here, yesterday, and Hutchins' commission on freedom of the press. Hutchins was also, as it happens, a renowned perennialist in his educational philosophy. UChi's undergrad program was Great Books centered while Hutchins presided over that domain.

[John Dewey had taught at Chicago, before Hutchins' day, and had propounded rather different views on education.]

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