THE RIGHT BOOKS

Most of the time, I must admit, my expectations for the success of the Great American Educational Reform Movement are depressingly low. Still, there are moments when it occurs to me that the reformers enjoy one great advantage: namely, that numbered among their most fervent supporters are not a few men and women who can actually write or, as John Simon aptly puts it, who “have language.” Even in this post-literate age, that fact is bound to weigh very heavily—though perhaps not (but who knows?) decisively—against the illiterate mass of their opponents in the educational establishment, who have taken so many “education” degrees and committed so many social sciences that they have succeeded finally in beating their heads into an array of mere “teaching tools” (which I have always imagined to resemble so many pipewrenches exhumed from the site of an eighty-year-old sewer project in the South Bronx). I caught glimpses again of this thin, yet wonderfully acute, ray of hope while reading Challenges to the Humanities (Holmes and Meier, 30 Irving Place, New York, N.Y. 10003; $29.50), edited by Chester E. Finn Jr., Diane Ravitch, and P. Holley Roberts: a collection of essays of greater-thanaverage distinction on the subject of the implications educational reform has for the future of humanistic studies in the public schools.

For the editors, the current drive for “excellence in education,” while laudable in itself, constitutes, paradoxically, new cause for alarm: “Those concerned about the humanities [have] reason to worry that the new era of school reform [is] based on premises that might actually weaken these subjects, which were not all that strong to begin with.” The historical American concern for the practical aspects of education and the fascination with scientific learning and technology, in combination with the contemporary skittishness about defining “values” and an even greater ambivalence about the existence of a common moral and cultural inheritance, raise the distinct possibility that reformism—so directly a response to fears for America’s economic vitality and technological prowess—will end by burying humanistic learning in public education under an avalanche of utilitarianism intermixed with a spurious, if not actually dishonest, egalitarianism. In the belief that such an event would constitute a cultural catastrophe the seismic tremors from which would eventually shake the democratic foundations of American society, the 12 contributors to the present volume seek to provide a coherent philosophical justification for averting it, along with suggestions for tackling the job.

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Most of the time, I must admit, my expectations for the success of the Great American Educational Reform Movement are depressingly low. Still, there are moments when it occurs to me that the reformers enjoy one great advantage: namely, that numbered among their most fervent supporters are not a few men and women who can actually write or, as John Simon aptly puts it, who “have language.” Even in this post-literate age, that fact is bound to weigh very heavily—though perhaps not (but who knows?) decisively—against the illiterate mass of their opponents in the educational establishment, who have taken so many “education” degrees and committed so many social sciences that they have succeeded finally in beating their heads into an array of mere “teaching tools” (which I have always imagined to resemble so many pipewrenches exhumed from the site of an eighty-year-old sewer project in the South Bronx). I caught glimpses again of this thin, yet wonderfully acute, ray of hope while reading Challenges to the Humanities (Holmes and Meier, 30 Irving Place, New York, N.Y. 10003; $29.50), edited by Chester E. Finn Jr., Diane Ravitch, and P. Holley Roberts: a collection of essays of greater-thanaverage distinction on the subject of the implications educational reform has for the future of humanistic studies in the public schools.

For the editors, the current drive for “excellence in education,” while laudable in itself, constitutes, paradoxically, new cause for alarm: “Those concerned about the humanities [have] reason to worry that the new era of school reform [is] based on premises that might actually weaken these subjects, which were not all that strong to begin with.” The historical American concern for the practical aspects of education and the fascination with scientific learning and technology, in combination with the contemporary skittishness about defining “values” and an even greater ambivalence about the existence of a common moral and cultural inheritance, raise the distinct possibility that reformism—so directly a response to fears for America’s economic vitality and technological prowess—will end by burying humanistic learning in public education under an avalanche of utilitarianism intermixed with a spurious, if not actually dishonest, egalitarianism. In the belief that such an event would constitute a cultural catastrophe the seismic tremors from which would eventually shake the democratic foundations of American society, the 12 contributors to the present volume seek to provide a coherent philosophical justification for averting it, along with suggestions for tackling the job.