Irresponsibility in Textbooks

In the last number of national review, your servant mentioned that one Wesley E. Young, Assistant General Manager of the Education Division, Rand McNally & Company, wrote a letter to one Richard B. Kennan, secretary of a NEA clique miscalled “The Commission for the Defense of Democracy through Education.” In this letter, dated August 25, 1960, Mr. Young declared that my review of a Rand McNally book was irresponsible. The trouble with his accusation was that he never had read my review; that the NEA Commission people never had read it, either; that, indeed, they could not have read it, for it had not yet been published; and even its subsequent publishers—America’s Future, Inc.—had not seen this review, because I had just written it, and it had not yet readied them. (The review was published the following December.) How irresponsible can educationists and textbook publishers get?

Kirk

RK

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Russell Kirk

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In the last number of national review, your servant mentioned that one Wesley E. Young, Assistant General Manager of the Education Division, Rand McNally & Company, wrote a letter to one Richard B. Kennan, secretary of a NEA clique miscalled “The Commission for the Defense of Democracy through Education.” In this letter, dated August 25, 1960, Mr. Young declared that my review of a Rand McNally book was irresponsible. The trouble with his accusation was that he never had read my review; that the NEA Commission people never had read it, either; that, indeed, they could not have read it, for it had not yet been published; and even its subsequent publishers—America’s Future, Inc.—had not seen this review, because I had just written it, and it had not yet readied them. (The review was published the following December.) How irresponsible can educationists and textbook publishers get?

Kirk