Word: dullness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When mamma marries a dull and decent man, then leaves him again for the theater, Dickie is the least surprised person in England. When one of Max's mistresses dies on his hands, and he, at 60, goes off with another, that too seems reasonable enough. With World War II just around the corner, Dickie Savage has in fact grown up and become a bit blasé. Heritage does not say that creative people are exempt from the rules of ordinary decency. But Author West tries to understand them and suggests that even illegitimacy and neglect...
...since Fan Stalin died, the word had got around somehow that it was all right to have novels with people in them again-just like Tolstoy. The New Neanderthalers in The Thaw-bureaucrats, engineers, state artists-are not exactly people, but sometimes Author Ehrenburg lets them wonder in a dull-witted way why they are not. Perhaps the Ice Age of Communism might some day thaw. Savchenko, an engineer, even has a vision of the future: "Huge tractors rushing out into the steppe, then corn, lots and lots of corn . . . Anybody would feel happy in such a factory. And there...
...type examinations should be restored as "the basic means of evaluating educational preparations and measuring educational achievement." Comprehensive testing, he says, is the answer to at least one big problem: how to give the best education to bright but needy pupils. It is an injustice to charge both the dull and the bright pupil the same college tuition, because one is potentially more valuable to society than the other. Bestor would bill everyone for full tuition, but reduce the bill on the basis of entrance examinations, giving top students free tuition...
...amoral family coachman. Today, 67 years after the play was first produced, the social implications of such a liaison have lost much of their urgency. Sjoberg realized that and emphasized Strindbergh's nearly Freudian character study. Unfortunately, he did not quite succeed--Julie still remains, if not actually dull, at least somewhat remote...
...idea that we once had marvelous public schools in this nation, and that modern philosophies of education have ruined them, is the most obvious kind of nonsense. What kind of public schools existed 50 years ago? City schools were dull and dingy buildings, with classes of 40 or more pupils common. Country schools were usually one-room affairs, with children of widely varying age and ability taught at the same time. Few of the teachers 50 years ago had anywhere near as much education of any kind as most teachers today. The elementary school curriculum was pretty much limited...