Word: bloom
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...authors think they know who their hungry readers are. Hirsch claims approval both from elders for his calling up of "what education used to be," and from those in their 20s who favor the book because they believe they have been shortchanged. Bloom reports that interest in his book "seems to come from parents who have lived for so long with the formulas and bromides from the '60s about how you educate your children. It somehow played upon a parental concern that hadn't found a voice." Bloom also feels that he, like Hirsch, has aroused the concern of disaffected...
...books' publishers, while dutifully crediting the quality of their authors' insights, acknowledge some plain marketing luck. "It's a cyclical thing," says Robert Asahina, Bloom's editor. "It started ((in 1955)) with Why Johnny Can't Read, and we just hit it right on the nose with this book, totally accidentally, of course...
Along with quarrels on ideology, perhaps the most intense objections to Bloom's and Hirsch's doctrines come from educators who feel that many of the ideas are out of touch with countrywide classroom realities. Says Ralph Cusick, principal of Chicago's 3,900-pupil, predominantly Hispanic Schurz High School: "What people lose sight of is that we've got to educate everybody -- even the 35 IQs -- and we've got them in school." Last year Schurz also had more than 20 student suicide attempts, with only one counselor to help every 400 youngsters -- not atypical of big-city schools...
...best sellers are criticized as well for urging a set of educational values that fail to take into account the pluralism and vast inequities in the U.S. educational system. Bloom, for example, harshly criticizes American universities for allegedly lowering standards to admit black students. And he objects to specialized courses like black studies, which he calls a "form of segregation." Such opinions have led many black educators to take him to task. Kenneth Tollett, professor of higher education at Howard University, accuses Bloom of "monumental insensitivity" toward blacks. They face great cultural barriers on white campuses, Tollett points out. "Special...
...number of faultfinding responses have satisfied the authors as much -- well, almost -- as the number of readers. Bloom notes that his purpose was never to offer a full range of solutions but rather to raise questions and, perhaps too, the level of debate. That, both of them have done, along with some hackles. And while some educators concede, however grudgingly, that the bottom line on both books is their extraordinary ability to engage the nation in a renewed dialogue on education, others say the very popularity of the books is the most powerful argument against their theses. For where...