"Education is indeed the dullest of subjects," remarks Jacques Barzun in his newly published Teacher in America (Little, Brown; $3), "and I intend to say as little about it as I can."
Author Barzun has little indeed to say about Education, i.e., the vast, vague "phantasmagoria," the "sulphur-and-brimstone nebula," the "overheated Utopia" that is popularly expected to "make the City of God out of Public School No. 26." But about Teaching he says plenty. His brisk, irreverent, earnest book will ventilate a good many stuffy rooms in the U.S. schoolhouse.
Jacques Barzun, 37-year-old son of a French scholar, was only nine when he...