EDUCATIONAL WASTELANDS

Subtitled ""The Retreat from Learning in our Public Schools"", this is sure to cause an uproar in academic circles, and will outrage as many teachers, educators, and psychologists as it will please. The Professor of History at Illinois looks over current trends in public school curricula and finds them heading towards an ""intellectual and cultural vacuum"" which is making a fetish of ""the technique of teaching for its own sake"". He looks with wary eye upon the new ""core curricula"" as not representing progressive but regressive education, and deplores the lack of the scholarly disciplines such as provided in teaching the classical languages, philosophy and higher mathematics. He remarks that in the secondary school ""grammar itself has become an obscene word."" A spirited and lively defense of an old position toward which many educators are again veering. A book of ideas which should interest students at college level-and parents of children in public schools.