notes.0c, cr 05 may 1997 by rha

barzun, the house of intellect, 1959

this, barzun's 21st book, is a bitter
lament on the loss of intellect in
the united states and europe. one of the
chief targets of this litany of doom
is the educational system, which is seen
in a herneutical circle with its ambient culture.
Two chapters are devoted do the illnesses
of schools: 
  * Ch IV, Education Without Instruction
  * Ch V, Instruction Without Authority
In the latter, as just one of a large
number of complaints, we find, on p. 139,
"this so-called 'technique of educational
measurement' or objective test, with a footnote
giving credit to Banexh Hoffman's article
in the Spring 1959 issue of _The American Scholar_
for the first discussion of such tests.

Barzun throws this down with:

"No other single practice explains more fully 
the intellectual defects of our students up 
to and through graduate school than their ingrained
association of knowlege and thought with the scratching
down of check marks and dotted lines."

So strongly does prof Barzun feel about this
that he appends, at the end of the book, more than
four pages of indictment from prof Hoffman himself.

end: notes.0c