Dr. Conant’s Nostrum

The “educators” are scared. The more prescient among them sense that, like Cardinal Wolsey, they have touched the highest point of all their greatness—and fear that from the full meridian of their glory they haste now to their setting. For four lush decades they have been able to silence all criticism by intoning a little of John Dewey’s magical gibberish and waving a diploma from Teachers College. But their Golden Age is over; the talismans no longer work. Nothing has been accomplished by vendettas directed against Professor Arthur Bestor and the others who have exposed the use of public schools to destroy mind and character. What is worse, parents in communities from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Pasadena, California, can no longer be kept in control by hypnotic buncombe chanted in meetings of Parent-Teacher Associations. What is even worse, some state legislatures are considering repeal of the laws that make the public schools the private domain of organized charlatanry.

In this evening of their day the “educators,” if they are to save their racket, must make—at least ostensibly—some concessions to reality. And they must invoke the aid of all their allies. One path of strategic retreat is being carefully lighted for them by an industrious torchbearer, Mr. John W. Gardner of the Carnegie Corporation. Two years ago his foundation hired (by a “grant,” of course) an ex-president of Harvard University to do the reconnoitering. The Big Name and his staff have now produced a superficially plausible booklet that will not alarm the taxpayer who does not read between the lines.

RO

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Revilo Oliver

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The “educators” are scared. The more prescient among them sense that, like Cardinal Wolsey, they have touched the highest point of all their greatness—and fear that from the full meridian of their glory they haste now to their setting. For four lush decades they have been able to silence all criticism by intoning a little of John Dewey’s magical gibberish and waving a diploma from Teachers College. But their Golden Age is over; the talismans no longer work. Nothing has been accomplished by vendettas directed against Professor Arthur Bestor and the others who have exposed the use of public schools to destroy mind and character. What is worse, parents in communities from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Pasadena, California, can no longer be kept in control by hypnotic buncombe chanted in meetings of Parent-Teacher Associations. What is even worse, some state legislatures are considering repeal of the laws that make the public schools the private domain of organized charlatanry.

In this evening of their day the “educators,” if they are to save their racket, must make—at least ostensibly—some concessions to reality. And they must invoke the aid of all their allies. One path of strategic retreat is being carefully lighted for them by an industrious torchbearer, Mr. John W. Gardner of the Carnegie Corporation. Two years ago his foundation hired (by a “grant,” of course) an ex-president of Harvard University to do the reconnoitering. The Big Name and his staff have now produced a superficially plausible booklet that will not alarm the taxpayer who does not read between the lines.