This document discusses the educational philosophy of perennialism. Perennialism believes that education should focus on teaching ideas and truths that are enduring and do not change, rather than contemporary ideas that may be fleeting. Key figures in perennialism discussed are Mortimer Adler, who advocated studying classics, and Robert Hutchins, who believed in a liberal education focusing on timeless truths through subjects like logic, math, language, science and history.

1. LORETO C. MORALES

2.  Perennial means “everlasting” like a perennial
flower that comes up year after year.
 The aim of education is to ensure that students
acquire understanding about the great ideas of
Western Civilization.
 These ideas have the potential for solving
problems in any era.
 The focus is to teach ideas that are everlasting, to
seek enduring truths which are constant, not
changing, as the natural and human worlds at
their most essential level, do not change.

3.  Perennialism is the educational philosophy of
neo-rationalists.(New rationalist- one who
wishes to teach students how to think and
reason)
 Permanence is more real than change.

4. MORTIMER ADLER
Great proponent of Perennialism and
professor of Philosophy at Columbia
University.
“An individual learns best by studying the
classics.”
He wrote the Paidea Proposal- seeks to
establish a course of study that is general,
not specialized; liberal not vocational;
humanistic, not technical.

5. “Education should adjust man to the
truth which is eternal, while the
contemporary is not.”
“Education implies teaching. Teaching implies
knowledge. Knowledge is truth.The truth
everywhere is the same. Hence, education
should be everywhere the same.”
“Education should be for the “long-haul”,
not for the immediate, contemporary
fad.”
“Education is not an imitation of life but a
preparation for it.”

6. ROBERT M. HUTCHINS (1899 - 1977)
leading perennialist spokesman in America.
former chancellor of the University of
Chicago.
Hutchins favors the school offering what he
calls a “liberal education”. This would
include emphasizing: logic, mathematics, the
discipline of language and science and
history.
These studies supposedly relate to the
timeless truths of all mankind(perennial
truths) and help us to think logically.