Books in Brief

Dogmatic Wisdom: How the Culture Wars Divert Education and Distract America, by Russell Jacoby (Doubleday, 235 pp., $22.95)

WITH the absurdities of multiculturalism and political correctness growing more grotesque by the day. many moderate educators who have gone along with the assault on standards and tradition would now like to distance themselves from the extremists. But how to accomplish this without oneself becoming a victim of the thought police? The favored method, adopted by Russell Jacoby, is to search out a middle ground from which to criticize both upholders of and assailants against the Western tradition. Mr. Jacoby’s version of this hors-de-combat-ism consists in maintaining that both camps