Word: bestor
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Anybody who believes that U.S. schools are teaching too much trivia can get inspiration and support from Historian Arthur E. Bestor of the University of Illinois, who is a sort of self-appointed conscience of U.S. education. Professor Bestor stirred up angry storms of controversy with his Educational Wastelands (TIME. Nov. 16, 1953), an extensive, documented attack on the "narrow group of specialists in pedagogy" who, Bestor claims, control U.S. schools. Those who thought that Wastelands was his final word of denunciation did not reckon on Bestor's persistency-or his thoroughness...
...like an adventure serial in which the characters and plot remain the same, but the conflict deepens. With wit and a careful aim, Professor Bestor once more lashes his favorite villains, the "professional educationists," who, by flooding the schools with "life-adjustment" courses and forcing teachers to master "the mere vocational skills of pedagogy," deprive students of the "intellectual disciplines that have rightly been considered fundamental in education." But, as its title implies, The Restoration of Learning balances negative criticism with a number of positive suggestions for educational reform. They are apt to be as controversial as anything Professor Bestor...
Retreat Denied. Rightly or wrongly, a group of N.E.A.'s teachers also made it obvio that they had little patience with such critics as Historian Arthur (Educational Wastelands} Bestor and Albert (Quackery in the Public Schools} Lynd...
...Arthur E. Bestor and his Educational Wastelands [TIME, Nov. 16]: Historian Bestor would have us make intellectuals of all children . . . Despite the fact that differentials in ability in public schools have increased downward since Bestor's school days, we are now turning out of the public schools more children who are actually better trained in subject matter . . . We must not return to the past when the special function of education was to cater to the needs of the few . . . WILBERT J. MUELLER Lawrence, Kans...
...education teacher . . . has the lowest contempt for any one who dares speak against her educational doctrines as set down by Dewey and other education philosophers -"the curriculum doctors" ... I agree with Mr. Bestor. The stress [in modern education] is too much on how and not why. Before I even took an education course'. . . I was all prepared to enjoy myself teaching the young boys and girls ... to ... raise them to an esthetic level in life, but now I am actually terrified to open a schoolroom window until I have been told in a textbook . . . how high it should...