Education: Where Are All the Young Brains?

Gone to academe every one, claims a gadfly's new book

The U.S. is not a nation that commonly confers celebrity on its discordant intellectuals. Yet in the past eight months, several feisty scholars have pounded academe, as well as society in general, and seen their books turn into unlikely best sellers. University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind attacked U.S. universities for dereliction of their duty to educate. The University of Virginia's E.D. Hirsch Jr. in Cultural Literacy blasted U.S. schools for failing to teach Western culture. Latest to join the list of academic provocateurs: Russell Jacoby, a former visiting scholar at the University of...

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