THE ART OF TEACHING

A little less classical in its stress (although Highet, now a Professor at Columbia, derives from Oxford and that ""long and noble tradition of exact scholarship and sound teaching""), this nevertheless has much of the same purpose, charm and enlightenment of Jacques Barzun's in America (1945). Here, with wisdom, tolerance, and some amusing amplifying material, is a discussion of the rewards of the teacher and his qualities- he must know his subject and continue to learn it; like his pupils and know them as well; serve as a bridge to the adult world. There are his methods: preparation, communication, classroom work; there are the stimuli of competition and tradition; and there are the precepts of great teachers, from Aristotle, Socrates and Plato to Jesus, to the teachers of the Renaissance, the Jesuits, to Osler and Phelps and Kittredge, and finally to the practice of teaching as we all experience it as fathers or mothers or husbands of wives.... Civilized, stimulating.