THE IMMORTAL PROFESSION: The Joys of Teaching and Learning

by Gilbert Highet ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 1976

Gilbert Highet's The Art of Teaching became a surprise best seller in 1950; in lieu of a companion volume, this is his modest, sparkling collection of talks and essays on the pleasures of scholarship, learning, and above all, teaching the young. Highet himself as a young man studied by gaslight, and he taught the classics for forty years, through the Depression, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, evidently with the same freshness of contact and firmness of authority which he recommends here to beginning teachers. As an elder trained in the tradition of the humanities by such liberal spirits as Gilbert Murray (whom he eulogizes here), Highet believes that some truths do not change whether they are taught at Plato's Academy, Oxford, or Berkeley. From this calm center his own curiosity and erudition range energetically and with humor from the characteristics of a good teacher to the critics of Albert Schweitzer, from a story of WW II veterans comprehending the Iliad to an inquiry into the ineptitudes of Jesus' twelve ""pupils."" A fit summation.

Pub Date: April 30, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Weybright & Talley/McKay

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1976

Categories: NONFICTION