Fresh Look at Education:

...Our language teaching is as good, (although generally inferior to that of Scandinavian schools), our mathematics is superior—or becoming so...

...The author is sure that there is no magical substitute for good teaching, and he is equally sure that good (or "great") teachers are artists for whom rules or techniques exist only to be departed from...

...The rest of the book moves through the grades from primary through high school, with alternating chapters on subject-areas— literature, mathematics, foreign languages and social studies...

...Nobody is yet scared enough to do anything...

...He undertakes the impossible job of assessing the achievements and shortcomings of American schools in comparison with those of European schools, and in comparison with what American schools ought to and perhaps can do...

...In another sense, however, society must ask the impossible of teachers...

...Our teaching of literature is inferior...

...Of course, a shrewd observation of a classroom illustrates many problems and principles, but some of these sketches are merely changes of pace, relevant only to education in the main...

...contributor, "The New Yorker," "Commentary" Martin Mayer's simple title, The Schools, is as ambitious and inclusive as the book itself...

...These comparisons with French and English education should do much to destroy the facile generalizations of doctrinaire supporters or attackers of American schools...

...Excellence cannot be produced in the high schools any more than sanctity in the theological schools...

...In organizing so much material, Mayer encounters difficult problems and solves most of them...

...The result is a book that is interesting and rewarding throughout, for the teacher, the "educator" and the public...

...Mayer has no particular hostility toward, or faith in, gadgets: He is dubious of both teaching machines and television, and interested in "team-teaching"—a group of teachers and apprentices and assistants under the direction of a "master teacher...

...What is more, though Mayer understands very well what is going on and detects immediately the difference between good and bad teaching, he sometimes presents his sketches so elliptically, with such dead-pan irony, that the ordinary reader may mistake his intention...

...For some reason, in spite of many fine comments along the way, Mayer does not include an organized section on the teaching of science...

...Yet he does not suggest despair...

...Finally, among many more topics, Mayer's righteous scorn for American textbooks, their authors and especially their publishers, stands out impressively...

...He sees steady improvement in our teaching of languages, science and mathematics...

...Unfortunately, though they are always interesting, they are not always apposite...

...In the effort to do their work better than they think they can, people acquire competence...

...And on the place of the fine and mechanical arts in the curriculum he is skimpy and unsatisfactory...

...The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do,' John Stuart Mill once wrote, 'never does what he can do.' The statement holds true for the teacher as well as the pupil...

...Together with general discussion, there are dozens of vignettes of actual classes...

...He shows convincingly—to anyone not already in Admiral Hyman Rickover's camp—that in many ways American schools are superior to those of England and France...

...In so huge a project the author has inevitably made slips of fact, style and judgment...

...A journalist and editor, he is observant, shrewd, witty, literate, sophisticated and suspicious of dogma...

...The first third of the book is a historical survey of universal compulsory education, with a rapid yet clear analysis of some of its theoreticians...

...Mayer has read and digested enormous amounts of material (and only those familiar with educational material can know what torture this can be for a sensitive literary stomach...

...but of the study of history, geography, economics and social problems he presents a distressing picture...

...and excellence is nothing more than the most precious by-product in the large-scale production of competence...

...he has visited a hundred schools here and many abroad...

...They remind me of the newsreels that John Dos Passos interlards among the pages of U.S.A., lively but random...

...But more than any other recent book on education, it deserves wide reading and discussion...

...Of teachers' colleges, though he is skeptical rather than antagonistic, he says, "Teacher training must become intellectually respectable before teachers as a group receive community respect...

...That he almost succeeds is astonishing...

...This section is one of the best things I have read on the subject, but for the general reader it probably should be supplemented by, say, Paul Woodring's Let's Talk Sense About Our Schools and One Fourth of a Nation...

...This is Mayer's conclusion, but there are many other wise and accurate observations along the way...

...On the junior high school level he is devastating, vitriolic—and convincing...

...and instead of relying on administrators and official publications, he has gone with open eyes and ears into the classroom to see what really happens...

...About literature: "Humanists must somehow face the fact that nothing keeps literature at the center of the secondary program today except social class pressure and the inadequacy of teaching methods in mathematics and science...

...Of American schools as a whole, Mayer thinks we do a good job in the primary grades and a fairly good job in the high school...

...Incidentally, he does not seem to realize how hard it is for the colleagues of a great teacher to live with him, and sometimes to clean up after him...

...There is no teacher-proof method," says Mayer...

...The book ends with excellent chapters on tests, technology (gadgets) and teacher training...