Books in Brief: What Went Wrong with American Education and How to Make It Right

WHAT WENT WRONG WITH AMERICAN EDUCATION AND HOW TO MAKE IT RIGHT, by Peter Witonski (Arlington, 191 pp., $6.95). THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: With Special Reference to the Collapse of City College of New York, by L. G. Heller (Arlington, 215 pp., $7.95).

Two worthy books, one message: New Leftists devastated the university because they met with vacillation, cowardice, and a lack of academic principle. Thus, the university’s future is bleak. Witonski is a hardliner on classical education, who castigates progressivism, vocationalism, politicization, egalitarianism, mass education, and lowering of standards. His best chapter presents student opinionaires documenting the leftward drift of students. Little else is new, though much is refreshing, if scattershot. Three caveats. Radical leaders are not all hooligans and ignoramuses, as Keniston and others have shown. Alarmism over “deviant hair styles” and other ephemera mars the book. A conservative critique of universities should aim at something more realistic than promoting the study of Greek and Latin. Heller’s book is a cri de coeur of an embattled but dignified professor. He blames open admissions for causing his beloved CCNY’s spectacular decline and argues beautifully against faculty quotas. The decimated and confused New Left must wish it was the successful conspiracy he imagines it is. Both authors interpret pessimistically the 1969-70 campus uprisings. But the ensuing calm constitutes a prima facie case against apocalyptic doom.

EE

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Edward E. Ericson Jr.

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WHAT WENT WRONG WITH AMERICAN EDUCATION AND HOW TO MAKE IT RIGHT, by Peter Witonski (Arlington, 191 pp., $6.95). THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: With Special Reference to the Collapse of City College of New York, by L. G. Heller (Arlington, 215 pp., $7.95).

Two worthy books, one message: New Leftists devastated the university because they met with vacillation, cowardice, and a lack of academic principle. Thus, the university’s future is bleak. Witonski is a hardliner on classical education, who castigates progressivism, vocationalism, politicization, egalitarianism, mass education, and lowering of standards. His best chapter presents student opinionaires documenting the leftward drift of students. Little else is new, though much is refreshing, if scattershot. Three caveats. Radical leaders are not all hooligans and ignoramuses, as Keniston and others have shown. Alarmism over “deviant hair styles” and other ephemera mars the book. A conservative critique of universities should aim at something more realistic than promoting the study of Greek and Latin. Heller’s book is a cri de coeur of an embattled but dignified professor. He blames open admissions for causing his beloved CCNY’s spectacular decline and argues beautifully against faculty quotas. The decimated and confused New Left must wish it was the successful conspiracy he imagines it is. Both authors interpret pessimistically the 1969-70 campus uprisings. But the ensuing calm constitutes a prima facie case against apocalyptic doom.