Books in Brief

Suffer, Little Children, by Max Rafferty (Devin-Adair, $3). If Johnny can’t read, and if Ivan knows things that Johnny doesn’t, the fault lies not with educators like Dr. Rafferty, but with the philosophers of progressivism who have ushered in the era of the gimmick, the age of adjustment, the period of the peer group. Under their direction, everything from nursery rhymes to classics has been leveled off. Ulysses and Penelope are replaced by Dick and Jane. The quest for the Golden Fleece gives way to the visit of Tom and Susan to the zoo. The voice of Moloch resounds throughout the land, says the author, warning in its oleaginous Teachers College accent that only the child’s felt needs must be met. And the new priests, with their field trips, group dynamics, Gestalt, topological vectors and maturation levels, have, little by little, picked the meat from the bones of education. The solution to our educational problem, he insists, is to raise intellectual standards and abandon the theories of a generation of educationist vipers. And the first duty of the schools should be to impart the accumulated wisdom of the race to our children, not to teach them adjustment. For to adjust to the twentieth century, Dr. Rafferty warns, is to come to terms with madness.

E. MC DOWELL

Suffer, Little Children, by Max Rafferty (Devin-Adair, $3). If Johnny can’t read, and if Ivan knows things that Johnny doesn’t, the fault lies not with educators like Dr. Rafferty, but with the philosophers of progressivism who have ushered in the era of the gimmick, the age of adjustment, the period of the peer group. Under their direction, everything from nursery rhymes to classics has been leveled off. Ulysses and Penelope are replaced by Dick and Jane. The quest for the Golden Fleece gives way to the visit of Tom and Susan to the zoo. The voice of Moloch resounds throughout the land, says the author, warning in its oleaginous Teachers College accent that only the child’s felt needs must be met. And the new priests, with their field trips, group dynamics, Gestalt, topological vectors and maturation levels, have, little by little, picked the meat from the bones of education. The solution to our educational problem, he insists, is to raise intellectual standards and abandon the theories of a generation of educationist vipers. And the first duty of the schools should be to impart the accumulated wisdom of the race to our children, not to teach them adjustment. For to adjust to the twentieth century, Dr. Rafferty warns, is to come to terms with madness.

E. MC DOWELL