National Paideia Center

The National Paideia Center was formed in 1988 by founder Mortimer Adler and then University of North Carolina President William Friday. Its mission is to inspire and support the transformation of American public education based on the principles of the Paideia Program as articulated by Adler and the original Paideia Group in The Paideia Proposal (1982). The Center offers training, materials, and technical support to both whole school communities as well as individual educators who are interested in rigorous, student-centered classrooms and schools. The ultimate goal is to prepare all American students to hold a job, to participate as a citizen of the nation and the world, and to pursue a good life.

The Center is widely celebrated for its work in training educators to implement the Paideia Seminar (intellectual dialogue about a text facilitated by open-ended questions) and the Paideia Coached Project (units of study resulting in products or performances of authentic value to audiences outside the classroom) in all classrooms K-12. Both the Seminar and the Coached Project are designed to render rigorous academic study accessible to the widest possible range of public school students.

For additional information, please visit the National Paideia Center website or contact:

The National Paideia Center
400 Silver Cedar Court, Suite 200
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Telephone: 919-962-3128
Fax: 919-962-3139