Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'SNOTEBOOK Teacherin America JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Jacques Barzun's Teacher in Amer ica, now reprinted by the Liberty Press, was first published in 1945. Though I was enormously interested in the subject (I had just finished a three-year stint teaching a class in Graduate School journalism at Dr. Barzun's own Columbia University), I had no time to read it. I was trying to learn the ropes of a new job in Washington. The book had comejust three years too late to help me, which was a mis fortune for some of the excellent stu dents (Flora Lewis of the Times, Al len Otten of the Wall Street Journal, Milton Stewart of the new Inc.·Mag azine, Marguerite Higgins, the only truly great Vietnamese war corre spondent, and Nona Balakian of the Sunday Times Book Review, to name just a few). I practiced on them, trying to reconcile the fact that I was teaching at a "methods" school, a "trade school," with my rebellious feeling that what journalism stu dents really needed. were courses in history, government, literature and economics. The "who, what, where, when" necessities for constructing a lead could be mastered in days, as I had discovered long ago.

If I had read Barzun I would have felt less guilty about trying to get "substance" into the students. His book does not decry "method." The modes of teaching-lecturing, keep ing orderly movement going in dis cussion groups, one-on-one tutorial sessions, written and oral examina tions-get a thorough going-over, reaching the eclectic conclusion that emphases in method should depend on the talents of the instructor. It is ~QQ 700 THE FREEMAN November the perversions of common sense that annoyed Barzun in 1944-45. The Progressives with their "look-say" methods of teaching reading and writing were then riding high. And famous performers such as Phelps and Tinker at Yale and "Copey" at Harvard were being scoffed at as "showmen." Teacherin Americaby Jacques Barzun. (LibertyPress 7440 N. Shadeland, Indianapolis, Indi ana 46250), 502 pages, $9.00 cloth; $4.00 paperback. It was a time when Bob Hutchins of Chicago University was com plaining that nobody read any great books in college. This was not true of Barzun's Columbia. John Er skine, the rediscoverer of Herman Melville and Moby Dick, had al ready started his course in General Honors Readings in the early twen ties, using a prepared list of fifty three great books from Homer to William James. The course had grown (Mark Van Doren and Morti mer Adler also taught it.) The idea spread to St. John's College in An napolis and to Hutchins' Chicago, where it became rigidified, with all history and science related to sources in "the one hundred best books."

Dr. Barzun thinks this was an "overreach"-"modern culture," he says, "has become specialized and each specialty, even when broadly conceived, requires the direct study of its current output." As a profes sional historian Barzun doesn't think any six "great books," even when they include Plutarch and Gibbon, can serve as the basis for a coherent idea of modern history. St. John's did, in 1944, supplement the historic classics with readings in later polit ical writers. But Barzun tried to give his students more than that. The vogue for "testing" and the use of multiple choice examinations filled Barzun with distaste in 1944. The more subtle the student, the more likely he is to cavil at the ar bitrariness behind yes-or-no ques tion choices. You can't spot Henry Ford as an ignoramus and historical bumbler because he couldn't assess the difficulties of his. "peace ship" expedition. He was an experimenter who, after all, made new industrial history by understanding the short comings of the old. He may not have known about the Jews or Wall Street banking. But history has many strands. I remember being made an grywhen the question, "Was Ford an historical ignoramus?" came up on my son's test during his junior year in high school. I would have flunked the answer. Cynically, Johnny gave the one that was ex pected of him. His aim was to make college.

1981 TEACHER IN AMERICA 701 The Ph.D. Octopus Dr. Barzun assailed the "Ph.D. Octopus" back in 1945. The ability to teach, he had observed, did not always coincide with the ability to do Ph.D. research. I had observed this at Yale where Bob French, in love with teaching his own Chaucer course, refused to waste time on what he regarded as Ph.D. nonsense. He didn't want to turn over his exam readings to young instructors while he labored with a supererogatory thesis that would take him away from personal contact with his stu dents. For a period he quit Yale to run a prep school. He eventually re turned when Yale needed house masters who did not necessarily have to have Ph.Ds. In a new foreword Barzun finds a "great chasm" between the Forties, when teachers wanted to teach, and the present, when commissions and panels and special foundation work leading to big fees are distracting elements. The test of a good aca demic job is that it leaves one with fewer contacts with campus life. The colleges now recruit from the "waste land" of a "once proud and efficient public school system." They must do their best with the "socially pro moted" and the "functional illiter ate." The inflationary costs make everything contentious. But Barzun has not given up. "There is no help for it," he says, "we must teach and we must learn." , AMERICA'SCHOICE: TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING OR DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT?

by James R. Evans (The Fisher Institute, 6350 LBJ Freeway, Suite 183E, Dallas, Texas 75240) 142 pages - $11.95 cloth Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz JIM EVANS is a businessman. That's his occupation. His preoccupation is human liberty, and for many years he has worked tirelessly on behalf of the free society-free economy philos ophy. He has lectured widely and frequently, he has appeared on radio and television, and now we have his second book. Give us a thousand businessman like Evans, and we'd soon have ten thousand more-and the nation would regain its health. It may have been The Foundation (FEE) that, years ago, turned Jim Evans on-as he generously says in the book's dedication-but it's his own steam that keeps him going now, working toward a new birth of lib erty. His book is crammed with perti nent factual information, which he buttresses with solid chains of rea soning and 'striking examples. A most convincing combination. In eighteen concise chapters Evans (a) presents an eloquent statement of our Amer ican heritage, (b) explodes the myths back of the anti-free economy stance, 702 THE FREEMAN November (c) reveals the extent to which we have implemented the ten points of The Communist Manifesto, (d) writes an expert critique of majoritarian ism-and much more.

This is a citizen's manual of free dom, not merely an exposition of the freedom philosophy. The conscien tious reader, hooked on liberty, is bound to ask, "But what can I do?" And the book answers with a list of eight things any person can and should do, and ten organizations who can help him do them. The excep tional reader may even become a writer-like Jim Evans-and the American dream will take on new substance. @ AFTER REASON by Arianna Stassinopoulos (Stein & Day, Scarborough House, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. 10510) 240 pages - $10.00 cloth Reviewed by Joseph C. Towle THE erudite and articulate author of this book writes a most persuasive brief for the thesis that our capacity for rational thought is only one of the several faculties of the mind, perhaps not even the most crucial one. That part of the mind which can draw an inference or frame a syllogism is only the upper, con scious, layer of the mind, sustained by layer upon layer below. Reason dissects and analyzes external real ities; it orders sense experience; it arrives at conclusions and tempers judgment. Reason is our only route to some truths, and it is a tool of survival. But reason has allies in the deeper layers of the mind, the seat of intuition, imagination, and poetic creativity. At these levels oc curs the subconscious recording of individual experience and that of the race, and the perception of met aphor in spiritual reality-mental functions which play an important role in aligning the individual with his life's meaning and purpose. It is not reasonable to depend on reason alone, for this limits or denies entry to other essential mental functions.

In the book's opening paragraph Miss Stassinopoulos declares that "the individual ... has been search ing more and more urgently for a spiritual path out ofthe closing trap." She might have said, in somewhat different terms, that modern life has become ugly in many ways because the human spirit no longer has space to exist, much less a climate for growth. The great Greek dramatists convey the same truth. The lesson of Euripides, Philip Vellacott his translator tells us, "is that civilized men ignore at their peril the world of instinct, emotion and irrational experience." Against Utopianism, a product of sterile, formulated reason, just how does the unscholarly, perhaps inar1981 OTHER BOOKS 703 ticulate working man define and de fend his rough but real spiritual ness, his need to transcend daily toil and worry, and his almost palpable sense of the reality of his inner life? The glib, smooth rationalists, gnos tics, planners, social "scientists," ed ucators, politicians-the intellec tual elite, mostly spiritual dropouts-all would make rhetori cal hash of what he knows he needs to make his life go tolerably.

They would cheapen and ridicule his spirit, the lore and wisdom of his fathers, and the symbols he depends upon to bear him up in often hostile surroundings and dark days. Miss Stassinopoulos brings sure understanding to the problem in clear, well documented prose, free of the jargon and sophistries so be loved of our intellectual masters. In her thorough, though occasionally repetitive inquiry she strongly at tacks the hubris and mendacity of the New Class-especially the "pro gressive" academy, clergy and poli ticians-and their specious and fraudulent schemes to rescue every man and all men from their own ac tions. This is to be done first by dis crediting their inherited wisdom and spiritual values and then by re-en gineering the abstraction called so ciety-faceless men and women. The New Class never bothers to define "society," which in fact does not ex ist as an entity. In reality, there are endless numbers of vastly different individuals each with his unique, disparate qualities, which make him go, do and live like no other.

After Reason is a sort of primer for the men and women who haven't the luxury of much time for reading and reflecting, but who know that things are not going well and are not sure just why. To the farmer, business man, shopkeeper, laborer and their fellows, Miss Stassinopoulos lends a strong guiding hand through the cleverly constructed maze of per plexities and obstacles to reality so grandly and condescendingly pre sented by the sycophants, sophists and other engineers of our spiritual, intellectual and moral decline. Here is a searching, honest and heartening work by a woman of ex ceptional gifts. She will be heard again-and not too soon for this re viewer. i THE TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS by William Mcllhany,II (Arlington House, 333 Post Road West, Westport,Connecticut06880) 302 pages- $20.00 cloth Reviewed by Tommy W Rogers THIS STUDY explores the degree to which the major tax-exempt foun dations have advocated, propagan dized for, and mobilized opinion on behalf of statism and collectivism in the areas of education, health pol704 THE FREEMAN icy, and public welfare. It reviews the various congressional investi gations of foundations from 1912 to 1969, and it specifically examines the major foundations (Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford), as well as the smaller activist foundations, such as The Twentieth Century Fund, the Field Foundation, and the Stern Fund. McIlhany has sifted through the publications of those founda tions, he has weighed the activities promoted by them, and he has had extensive interviews with those in charge.

McIlhany's research corroborates the suspicion that tax-exempt foun dations are "promoting, almost ex clusively, socialism at· home and world government abroad, and doing so at taxpayers' expense." These ideological goals are consistently of a coercive and anti-free market na ture, "controversial at best and de,;, structive of the entire social system which originally produced the fund ing wealth at its worst." The author's philosophical per suasion is libertarian and Austrian. He advocates a laissez-faire econ omy in which government would be limited to the provision of local criminal justice and national de fense, all other products and ser vices being offered on the free marketo He does not think "it is unreasonable to suppose that under such a system individuals would voluntarily pay the state for its two functions since they would not be forced to pay for anything else." And, as he notes, "in a free economy all problems relevant to tax-exempt foundations would disappear, except instances of criminal conduct pun ishable under other laws. All chari ties could function as competing, profit-making companies, offering some investment return to their contributors, or they might compete solely on the basis of their benefi cent accomplishments." Such, he writes, is the ideal form of public ac countability.

Meanwhile, foundation promotion of statist orthodoxy must be chal lenged "if we are to be able to create sufficient public understanding to prevent the foundations from de stroying what remains of the system that made possible the creation of accumulated wealth which sustains them." McIlhany has accomplished a major step toward that public un derstanding. He has produced an ex cellently researched, substantively documented, analysis of the· impact of the tax-exempt foundations. This book is definitely worth reading, in cluding the footnotes. i) the Freeman VOL. 31, NO. 12 • DECEMBER1981 The Myth of Self-Reliance Bill Anderson 707 Nostalgia for the II good old days" may mean poverty and misery. Contraction of State Must Be Common Goal Kenneth McDonald 714 Reducing our claims will curb government controls. The Benefits of Speculation Walter Block 717 The speculator serves by reducing price fluctuations.