Mortimer J. Adler's Mussar for Religious Educators

This excerpt from a lecture by Mortimer Adler to Catholic educators speaks just as powerfully to Jewish educators. If we truly took his words to heart, Jewish education would be in a far better place.

Apr 25, 2025

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Artwork: ChatGPT4o’s response to the prompt, “Impressionist-style painting of a modern Catholic priest standing next to a Modern Orthodox rabbi, both in dark suits, gently smiling against a softly textured background”

I came across a lecture delivered in San Francisco on April 19, 1941, by Mortimer J. Adler to the American Catholic Philosophical Association, entitled The Order of Learning. At the beginning of the lecture, Adler announced:

“I am going to deal with the means of education, not with the ends ... The question I propose to answer is: Given ideally perfect ends, how shall the basic means be ordered?”

At first, I dismissed the lecture offhand because it was addressed to Catholic educators. But then I realized it might be worth reading, since the essay is really about teaching and might contain insights that could be of use to Jewish educators as well. Lo and behold, Adler didn't let me down.

Here is an excerpt from the lecture which, in my opinion, should be taken to heart by all Jewish teachers. I generally avoid tampering with another writer’s words, but to minimize the dissonance my Jewish readers might experience, I’ve substituted all Catholic references with their Jewish equivalents.

The Order of Learning – by Mortimer J. Adler (excerpt)

Now I say that all of these right procedures appear to be radical innovations only because they were forgotten or corrupted by the decadent classical education of the last century, against which progressive education rose in justifiable rebellion. Truly, all these procedures are founded on ancient insights about the order of teaching and learning, insights which every Jewish educator must possess if he understands the nature of man and of human teaching, according to the principles of the philosophy he generally affirms. Let me briefly enumerate some of these points. The Jewish educator knows:

The difference between intellectual habit and sensitive memory. Hence he knows that verbal proficiency, which is a work of sensitive memory, must not be confused with the habit of understanding.
That habits of understanding can be formed only by intellectual acts - acts on the part of the student, not simply acts by the teacher. Hence he knows that the teacher is always a secondary cause of learning, never a primary cause, for the primary cause must always be an act on the part of the learner’s own intellect.
That the intellect depends on sense and imagination, and also that it can be swayed and colored by the motion of the passions. Hence he knows that the discipline of the liberal arts must precede the process of acquiring the speculative virtues, for it is the liberal arts which rectify the intellect in its pursuit of truth — the arts of grammar and logic which protect the intellect against the deceptions of verbal and other symbolization, and all the wayward imagery of sense; the arts of logic and rhetoric, which guard against the incursions of passion, and the coloring of thought by irrelevant emotion.
That the intellectual virtues are always a mean state between vicious extremes of saying too much or saying too little — dogmatic affirmations in excess, or skeptical denials in defect. Hence he knows that truth is always an eminent synthesis of false extremes, a sober resolution of false issues made by extreme positions; he knows that the truth can be genuinely possessed only by a mind which sees the truth always as a correction of manifold and diverse errors, and never by the mind which tries to be alone with the truth in an artificially antiseptic environment.

The Jewish educator knows all these things, because they are fundamental truths in his philosophy of man. But, unlike his secular colleague, who may not acknowledge these truths at all, or certainly not know them so deeply, but who nevertheless seems to practice according to their meaning, the Jewish educator, who knows them, often violates them in practice by educational methods which:

Put a premium on verbal memory instead of intellectual habit.
Proceed as if the teacher were the only active cause of learning, and as if the learner could be entirely passive.
Neglect or wrongly subordinate the liberal arts to a supposed mastery of subject-matter.
Try to do the impossible — namely, to give the students genuine possession of the truth without ever really perplexing them first by the problems or issues which the truth resolves — and this requires a vital experience of error, for genuine perplexity is usually killed along with the dummy opponents who have been made into straw men for quick demolition.

Before I proceed now to a brief statement of the order of learning, based upon these truths, let me anticipate one objection I have received from Jewish educators as to means. I am told that Jewish education must give its day school graduates a fundamental body of truths for the guidance of their lives. I am told that this necessitates the covering of much ground. You can guess my response. I simply ask what is the point of covering ground, if the students’ feet never touch it, if they never learn through independent exercise to walk by themselves, with head erect and unafraid of all intellectual opposition and difficulty. What is the point of memorizing truths, if they can really guide us only when they are genuinely possessed, if they can protect us from falsehood only to the extent that we understand them as fully refuting errors — real, live errors, not dummy ones concocted for the purposes of an easy victory. I would feel happier about the graduates of yeshivot if they really understood a few truths well — understood them as solving problems which vigorously challenge the mind and perplex it — rather than be able to recite, from merely verbal memory, a whole catechism of philosophical answers to problems they did not really understand or take seriously. I would be happier if they were merely disciplined in the pursuit of truth and in the rejection of error, rather than be, as they now are in so many cases, unable to give an account of what they know because it is known by memory rather than possessed by intellectual habit.

Adler's Footnote:

The point I am here making does not deny that it may be useful in some way for Jewish students — or, for that matter, any other students — to be “indoctrinated” with philosophical truths they do not really understand and, therefore, do not really possess. Truths, thus acquired, do not constitute knowledge, subjectively, but only right opinion. If a person, for one reason or another, cannot attain knowledge, it is better that he have right opinion than be ignorant or in error — for right opinion can serve as a guide to action, even if it fails utterly to perfect the intellect. But the utility of right opinion, which may justify the sort of indoctrination that goes on in many Jewish institutions, does not justify the process of indoctrination itself in the sphere of liberal education, aiming specifically at the perfection of the intellect. For, in the first place, the method of indoctrination, if condoned, is likely to result in the imposition of wrong opinions — as Jewish educators are the first to realize when they survey the work of secular institutions; and, in the second place, the method of indoctrination violates the very nature of liberal education by substituting opinion, right or wrong, for knowledge ... certainly if the matters fall within reason’s sphere, and the authority is human, truth so held is mere opinion. But the aim of liberal education is the perfection of the intellect by the genuine possession of the habitus of knowledge. The utility of right opinion for certain practical purposes cannot, therefore, excuse failures in liberal education.

What do you think about his advice and his critiques? I’m more interested in dissenting perspectives, but I’m all for arguments in favor as well!

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