Our Children and Our Country, by William J. Bennett (Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $19.95)
William Bennett is a nightmare for the American education establishment. The worst of it is the way he keeps getting into the news. Wherever the controversial education secretary goes, he succeeds in putting education issues on the front page and in front of the cameras—the last thing the professionals want. Last year when Bennett came to Chicago, the school board thought it was prepared for anything. It wasn’t. What the secretary told the press was simple. Before his visit, he said, he had been under the impression that Chicago had the second-worst school system in the nation, but after seeing it in action he’d changed his mind: it was the worst.
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