In February 2002, I visited the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Paideia Community Academy, a public magnet school in Chicago. Powell's student population is overwhelmingly poor and minority. Yet the school is a model of what determined educators—and engaged students—committed to academic rigor can achieve under difficult circumstances.
As Powell teachers escorted me from room to room, I asked students questions about particularly memorable texts and Paideia seminars in which they had participated. These students had cut their teeth on seminar discourse—they had become accustomed to asking as well as answering hard questions. As I entered one 6th grade classroom, a student quickly turned the tables on me. With a happy gleam in her eyes, she asked me, “What caused you to become so interested in the seminar in the first place?” I told the class that I had long been fascinated by the thrill that we get when we learn something for the first time. It doesn't matter how many others learned it before we do. When one first understands something new, it's as exciting as if the idea has just been born. “It's like lightning striking inside your head,” I concluded.
I glanced around the room and noticed that most of the students were nodding in agreement. “It seems to me,” I added, “that the seminar is the one place in school where you are free to think for yourselves—so it's the one place in school where the most lightning flashes.” I looked around the room again, and one young man, whose desk had been moved (by himself or by the teacher?) against the back wall, was staring intently at me. Without raising his hand, he blurted out, “You got that right!”
Questions on a Text
Paideia is a Greek word that expresses the idea of nurturing the whole child. The Paideia Program is a systemic, whole-school transformation project based on the work of philosopher Mortimer Adler. Adler's original manifesto, The Paideia Proposal (1982), argued that U.S. classrooms could be made both more student-centered and more rigorous—thereby providing a quality education for all students—through the use of three types of complementary instruction: didactic teaching of information, coaching of intellectual skills, and seminar discussion of ideas and values. In recent years, Paideia advocates have created the Paideia Coached Project, which redefines the traditional unit of study to include all three “columns” of teaching and learning in a seamless whole that results in quality student products and performances.
The Paideia seminar, an integral component of the Paideia approach, is a collaborative, intellectual discussion propelled by open-ended questions about a text. A “text” may be a written document. But it may also be a photograph, a work of art, a map, a graphic math problem, an architectural drawing—almost anything, in essence, as long as it is both rich in ideas and ambiguous. Every seminar should be collaborative, intellectual, and open-ended—be it a 3rd grade discussion of the human skeleton (as the text), a discussion among 7th grade math students about an open-ended math problem, or a seminar in an 11th grade American history class about one of the Federalist Papers. Regardless of the chosen text, Paideia seminars are carefully planned, somewhat formal classroom dialogues.
People who have only read about Paideia seminars tend to think that they are dry, intellectual exercises. Educators often assume that their students either couldn't (for intellectual reasons) or wouldn't (for social reasons) participate in such a rigorous event. Nevertheless, the experiences of countless Paideia students tell a different story. In fact, for many students, the seminar is one of the few events in the day during which they exhibit a passion for learning. Why? We see the spark of passion for learning when students are actively engaged with an idea or an exercise that is immediately relevant to them as human beings. Paideia educators routinely see evidence of that spark when students are engaged in interactive, student-centered seminar dialogues—reading, thinking, and speaking about and listening to ideas that are important to them.
Seminar Roles
- Invest the necessary time and energy to select an appropriate text and prepare open-ended questions (National Paideia Center, 2002b).
- Coach students during pre-seminar “process” activities to balance speaking and listening to gain the most benefit from the seminar (Gordon, 1991; Roberts & National Paideia Center, 1998).
- Consciously limit the number of talk turns and the amount of teacher talk time so that all students have time to speak (Billings, 1999).
- Practice good listening and note-taking skills during the seminar to pose genuine, provocative follow-up questions (Roberts & Billings, 1999).
- Use postseminar “process” and “content” activities to render the seminar dialogue relevant to the students (National Paideia Center, 2002b).
- Invest the necessary time and energy in reading and studying the text in detail (National Paideia Center, 2002b).
- Accept responsibility for and continually strive to improve their own individual learning behaviors—questioning, speaking, and listening—during a seminar (Roberts & Billings, 1999).
- Consciously contribute to the seminar discussion by stating their own ideas and by actively listening to the ideas of others (Billings, 1999; Nystrand, Gamoran, Kachur, & Pendergast, 1997).
- Learn to agree and disagree with others in a thoughtful and respectful manner (National Paideia Center, 2002b).
- Understand that the seminar is a part of the ongoing learning life of their classroom (National Paideia Center, 2002a).
- Practice postseminar writing as a way of articulating their increased understanding of the values and ideas gleaned from the text and dialogue (National Paideia Center, 2002b).
Owning Ideas, Nurturing Skills
Students learn to care deeply about ideas in the seminar because they can make those ideas their own. Because the teacher is talking less than in traditional discussion (ideally, only about 30 percent of the time), and because he or she is asking open-ended questions, students are freed to offer their own ideas without fear of ridicule or mistake (Billings, 1999). Through open discussion, students can “draft” ideas, compare their ideas with those of others, and generate increasingly coherent and sophisticated statements about the text. They can practice thinking in an environment that both respects and challenges their ideas. And in a successful seminar, all students in a class experience this demanding and meaningful experience simultaneously.
The Paideia seminar is a laboratory for developing students' social skills as well as their intellectual skills (see, for example, Center for Educational Research and Evaluation, 1999; Wheelock, 1994). Social skills include such fundamental interpersonal attributes as respect, caring, candor, and tact—vital skills in a diverse classroom as well as in life. Students develop these skills in a safe, respectful seminar atmosphere that encourages all students to contribute. As students participate in seminars, they learn to think and speak for themselves about ideas and values. The seminar is about students: their active participation, intellectual growth, and emotional engagement and development.
The Seminar in Action
Sacred Earth
Kindergarten students at Indian Avenue Elementary School in Bridgeton, New Jersey, engaged in a curriculum-based seminar using an excerpt from Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, illustrated by Susan Jeffers, an adaptation of Chief Seattle's speech to U.S. agents expressing his belief that the land cannot be owned and that we have a responsibility to protect and replenish the planet's resources. Near the end of the seminar, the students' teacher asked them whether they thought that it was possible to “own the rain and the wind,” which Chief Seattle argues against in his speech. The students agreed that to own nature is impossible, and they offered many reasons why this was true. Eventually, one student asked,Now, if I had a bucket in my backyard, and it rained, and my bucket was full of rain, wouldn't I own the rain in the bucket?
The other students began to waver, and several agreed that in such a case, she would own the rain. Another student disagreed, however—politely, as he'd been taught—arguing that once the water was in the bucket, it was no longer rain.
The students went on to discuss which parts of the earth they considered sacred or special. The list was surprising in its variety and detail. In the days following the seminar, students created their own illustrations for Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, drawing pictures of the world as they imagined that Native Americans must have perceived it. The creation of a fully illustrated or annotated version of a text is one example of a Paideia Coached Project: Students use the ideas and values they have discussed in seminar to produce a quality product of their own design.
Listening for a Lifetime
Back at Powell Academy in Chicago, a group of 7th and 8th graders—the Think Tank Group—meet together regularly for extra seminar discussions outside of class. Recently the students engaged in an in-depth discussion of excerpts from two texts, Booker T. Washington's “Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are” speech and W. E. B. DuBois's “No Cowards or Trucklers” speech. The students compared Washington's pacifist response to racism with DuBois's more radical, activist response. These 12- and 13-year-old African American students agreed early in the seminar that the wisest approach to racism contained elements of both philosophies. The seminar's closing question, which asked students to consider what skills they could bring to the human community, inspired many to express the desire to become great listeners. After the seminar, one student participant told me that she hoped she would remember how to listen when she became an adult.
Powell's Think Tank Group is another example of a Paideia Coached Project—in this case, a yearlong project involving volunteer students from various classes who are “coached” by the principal and others in the selection and discussion of texts from a number of disciplines. In addition to the benefits that students derive from the seminar discussion itself, participation in the project nurtures key leadership skills in the students involved in the group by teaching them to converse openly about complex ideas with adults.
Moral Duty and Macbeth
At a schoolwide seminar at Southern Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, all of the school's 800 students met in seminar groups to discuss an excerpt from The Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant. During the seminar, students discussed the difference between being praised and encouraged and being esteemed and admired. The seminar's closing question was, What do you think our moral duties are?
Paideia facilitator and English teacher Lynne Murray reports that many of her faculty colleagues were initially hesitant to use so challenging a text, only to discover that the resulting dialogue was one of the students' most successful seminars. Did the students understand the text from the beginning? Definitely not, reports Murray. Did they struggle mightily to come to grips with the text and with a conception of moral duty? Just as emphatically, yes.
Approximately a week after the seminar, a student witnessed a car accident in which one of the vehicles involved caught on fire. Having been trained as a Junior Firefighter, the student grabbed the fire extinguisher from his own vehicle to help put out the flames and then attempted to rescue the victim. The following day, the young man told one of his teachers,I didn't do it for the glory. It was just like in that seminar. It wasn't something I wanted to do; I did it out of moral duty.
Lynne Murray also uses the Paideia seminar when her students study literature. Recently, her students mounted a full-scale production of Macbeth as the culminating product of their coached project on William Shakespeare. Their seminar discussions of Macbeth informed their staging of the play as well as how the students chose to portray the characters.
A Climate of Caring
Many students find it difficult to care about their coursework—students who are scared or alienated in school, those who feel unsafe or angry, and even those who are simply bored. For such students, the Paideia approach offers hope. The seminar encourages a calmer, less threatening classroom climate, a place where students feel free to be themselves. They become comfortable as they learn to define themselves as part of a community of individuals who sit in the seminar circle.
Consistent use of the seminar also allows students to practice analytic thinking, a skill that is transferable to life outside school. Seminars give students the means to construct their own understanding of important ideas and values.
Ultimately, the Paideia seminar is a timeless learning ritual through which students learn to care, and, as a result, care to learn. When I think of the students of Powell Academy and one girl's sincere, probing question—“What caused you to become so interested in the seminar in the first place?”—I am reminded that the Paideia seminar is a place where the lightning of understanding flashes regularly across students' minds. The lightning strikes because those bright young minds have been given the means—time, space, security, challenge—to generate their own inspired ideas in genuine dialogue.
