Drop the Straitjacket

Anybody who believes that U.S. schools are teaching too much trivia can get inspiration and support from Historian Arthur E. Bestor of the University of Illinois, who is a sort of self-appointed conscience of U.S. education. Professor Bestor stirred up angry storms of controversy with his Educational Wastelands (TIME. Nov. 16, 1953), an extensive, documented attack on the "narrow group of specialists in pedagogy" who, Bestor claims, control U.S. schools. Those who thought that Wastelands was his final word of denunciation did not reckon on Bestor's persistency--or his thoroughness.

The Conflict Deepens. His new book.

The Restoration of Learning (Knopf: $6),

is like an adventure serial in which the characters and plot remain the same, but the conflict deepens. With wit and a careful aim, Professor Bestor once more lashes his favorite villains, the "professional educationists," who, by flooding the schools with "life-adjustment" courses and forcing teachers to master "the mere vocational skills of pedagogy," deprive students of the "intellectual disciplines that have rightly been considered fundamental in education." But, as its title implies, The Restoration of Learning balances negative criticism with a number of positive suggestions for educational reform. They are apt to be as controversial as anything Professor Bestor has said to date.

U.S. schools must face the problems of both the slow learner and the gifted pupil.

The solution Bestor suggests is nothing less than "a drastic change in the traditional grade structure," revolving around a dual grouping of students--by chronological and mental age.

The public-school system would be divided into: elementary school, for children from five to twelve; high school, for adolescents from 13 to 16; junior college, for young adults of 17 and over. All students would enter school at the same age (five), but move together from one division to the next when they reached the appropriate age. regardless of how far they had advanced scholastically.

Break for the Bright. Grades in each division would overlap, the grammar school offering some high-school courses for the bright student, the high school offering some elementary courses for the slow student. Bright students would go right to college from high school, average or slower students spending varying periods in the junior college preparing for college or undertaking vocational studies. Throughout their schooling, students would be knit together in groups of their own age for all nonacademic activities.

After U.S. schools are released "from the straitjacket of their present grade structure," says Bestor, comprehensive, essay-type examinations should be restored as "the basic means of evaluating educational preparations and measuring educational achievement." Comprehensive testing, he says, is the answer to at least one big problem: how to give the best education to bright but needy pupils. It is an injustice to charge both the dull and the bright pupil the same college tuition, because one is potentially more valuable to society than the other. Bestor would bill everyone for full tuition, but reduce the bill on the basis of entrance examinations, giving top students free tuition.

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