Mortimer J. Adler Quotes (31 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Source: F.N. D'Alession. " Philosopher, reformer Mortimer Adler, father of 'Great Books' program, dies at 98 http://lubbockonline.com/stories/062901/upd_075-4286.shtml#.VVHE0_ntmko." at lubbockonline.com, June 29, 2001.

“For the educational establishment… test scores are treated as indications of the extent to which the required ground covering has been done. …as educationally significant. However, while they may be prognostic of a child's ability to get through school… they do not provide us with an appraisal of the child's progress in the long process of becoming a generally educated human being -- the advance made toward a more skillful, thoughtful, and cultivated mind.”

Mortimer J. Adler

Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 312

“A report of the Carnegie Foundation recommended the abolition of the undergraduate bachelor of science degree in education leading to the state certification of teachers. Schools of education should become research institutions at the graduate level of the university and not places for the training of schoolteachers. Those planning to enter the profession of teaching should have four years of general, liberal education at the college level, and then three years of practice teaching under supervision… the best teacher is one who learns in the process of teaching.”

Mortimer J. Adler

Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 314

“Above all, money-making and other external indices of social success must become subordinate to the inner attainments of moral and intellectual virtue.”

Mortimer J. Adler

Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 314

“To avoid this error, the error of assuming that that to be widely read and to be well read are the same thing, we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning. … In the history of education, men have often distinguished between learning by instruction and learning by discovery. … Discovery stands to instruction as learning without a teacher stands to learning through the help of one. In both cases the activity of learning goes on in the one who learns. It would be a mistake to suppose that discovery is active learning, and instruction passive. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading. This is so true, in fact, that a better way to make the distinction clear is to call instruction “aided discovery.””

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 11-12

“Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write – and they do.”

Mortimer J. Adler

“An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.”

Mortimer J. Adler

Source: Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling (1977), p. 255

“[Television, radio, and magazines] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.”

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 4

“It is obvious that teaching is a very special art, sharing with only two other arts, agriculture and medicine, an exceptionally important characteristic A doctor may do many things for his patient, but in the final analysis, it is the patient himself who must get well, grow in health. The farmer does many things for his plants or animals, but in the final analysis, it is they that must grow in size and excellence. Similarly, although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning. Knowledge must grow in his mind if learning is to take place.”

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 12

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Mortimer J. Adler Quotes

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How to Read a Book

How to Read a Book

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