Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools

by Arthur Eugene Bestor

2016 Reprint of 1953 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In the mid-1950s, Bestor became well-known in educational circles as a critic of then-common educational doctrines; "Educational Wastelands" was his manifesto about declining educational standards. "Bestor charged that professional educationists had "lowered the aims of the American public schools," particularly by "setting forth purposes for education so trivial as to forfeit the respect of thoughtful men, and by deliberately divorcing the schools from the disciplines of science and scholarship" (pp. 8, 10). For Bestor, the traditional liberal arts curriculum represented the only acceptable form of secondary education. He claimed that Progressive educators, "by misrepresenting and undervaluing liberal education, have contributed ... to the growth of anti-intellectualist hysteria that threatens not merely the schools but freedom itself." (p. 11)-Cited in WWW.Stateuniversity.com article on Bestor.

Genres: Education

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1985

Reviews

[Jeremy Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Setting aside the author's periodic emphasis on local matters stemming from his home state of Illinois, or his sudden (yet historically understandable) focus on communism in the latter few pages of a book written in 1953, Bestor's work offers a timeless respect for education as a proud, intellectual endeavor for which teachers and the profession itself are now frequently robbed of time to consider. As a teacher reading the first few essays/chapters, I found myself re-evaluating my own methods of instruction, with an eye toward helping students reach historical and literary conclusions more often, rather than merely informing them and feeding them with facts to which they often and understandably lack context. Reading through the second half of Bestor's treatise, I couldn't help but agree with his critical assessment of education courses that disproportionately lean heavy toward pedagogy rather than subject-area expertise, demanding that teachers continue to re-up their knowledge of how to teach, with little emphasis on what they will teach, as if the latter were irrelevant. His proposals for a new approach to teacher training were just as inspiring as they were frustrating, more so because 75 years after they were written, nothing appears to have changed for the better, and our system of public education is consistently floundering as a result, with no end in sight.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite what it says in the GR entry, this was previously published by the University of Illinois Press in Urbana in 1953. Later, when I went to college at UIU, I learned that my friend Ellie was the author's daughter-in-law.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting how many of his arguments are still controversial today.