The perennialist teacher involves the student in a discussion of the great works. The teacher's interest leads the student toward engaging these works. The goal is not to explicate the text for the student but to get the student involved with the problems and issues presented in these works. Once that happens students begin to reason in ways that can help them solve problems the teacher could never have imagined. It was probably no accident that Americans, who weren't as interested in tradition as they were in the next frontier, would develop a philosophy that emphasized the importance of testing ideas against experience.
Pragmatism posits that the truth is never final.
It is always subject to being tested against new conditions. If an idea can be shown to work then it is valuable - if not it should be discarded. We learn through experience and we develop our ideas through acting in the world. Pragmatists believe that open communication, the testing of ideas through discussion, is an essential part of a classrom where discovery is the primary objective. Since open communication is also necessary for a democratic society the classroom is also seen as a laboratory for social progress.