Adler addresses the controversy of what should be taught in our schools. He suggests that is should serve and be made available to all. He begins with a stinging critique of Allan Bloom and offers his advice for the best education.
This collection of programmatic essays and occasional pieces argues for the restoration of form and substance to the dishwater mixture we currently call education in America. Adler, the foremost proponent of the Great Books program (adult education at its purest) and the Paedeia Proposal (public school reform), writes eloquently and passionately in defense of a truly democratic vision of education. The best education for the few is the best education for everyone; education for free people must be founded in the discussion of values, encountered in dialogue with great minds as revealed in great books. Education's goal is ``citizenship and . . . a life enriched by continuous learning.'' There is, of course, repetition in an anthology which covers 50 years of writing on educational reform, but even the oldest of these essays seems fresh. Highly recommended.-- David Keymer, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Utica

A founder of the ``great books'' movement, Adler ( How to Read a Book ) opens this collection of his essays that span a half century with a stinging rebuke to The Closing of the American Mind , Allan Bloom's pessimistic appraisal of today's colleges. Academic malaise, Adler counters, is rooted in the deficiencies of basic schooling. His concept of Paideia, or general education, runs as a theme throughout these pieces, arguing that the great books approach is successful in the few school districts which have daringly reorganized their resources to teach children in the dialectical, Socratic manner. He updates the great books list to include others from this century: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time , books by Teilhard De Chardin, Claude Levi-Straus and Saul Bellow. As philosopher, humanistic teacher and educational pioneer, Adler is well viewed in these essays that contribute sound judgment to the controversy of what should be taught in our schools. (Mar.)