Curriculum Philosophy

I am going to try to blog my ideas fairly regularly from my grad course "Curriculum Foundations"

The first entry is about the first philosophy that I've read called Perennialism:

It is basically the idea that truth is knowable and that human nature is constant in being able to know that truth. To get there one must read the "Great Books" (Plato, Rousseau, Shakespeare, to name only but a few) and the mind will become disciplined as a result--which will ultimately lead to understanding/analysis/investigation--a stretching of the mind so to speak.
I suppose one of the big proponents was Allan Bloom who in his work The Closing of the American Mind, argues that as a society we are in decline because we have subjected our education to cultural relativism and have lost sight of the rigor and discipline that is necessary to produce truly educated individuals.

Now, this entry is only based on a quick reading of the Perennial section in my Text Book. Please comment on the merits of said philosophy and drawbacks as well.

dt