Teacher in America - Softcover

Jacques Barzun is Literary Advisor to the Charles Scribner's Sons company.

To the ordinary mortals who do not teach, the ongoing crisis in "education" is often puzzling.

Teacher in America indirectly explains the crisis: too few people know that there is a great deal more to teaching than the ritual we call education.

Barzun, a lifelong teacher, describes teaching from the student's point of view. He describes each glorious occasion of understanding as something we all either actually crow about or wish to. Well then. Surely we're learning, grasping, comprehending new facts and concepts each day. Why aren't more of us crowing?

Because, Barzun says, teaching is an art and the art is nearly lost. The feeling that would make us crow has been educated out of most of us.

Teacher in America is a celebration of learning, of teaching, of the differences and similarities among people. Barzun holds teachers high, and the work they do even higher. He scorns those who do it badly for lack of imagination or energy.

He blows raspberries at institutions and their politicizing of education even as he recognizes why it happened. He upbraids students who can't be bothered to participate in their own intellectual growth.

Teacher in America is at once revealing, insightful, detailed, and fun. It was first published in 1944. How could it still be revealing and insightful, let alone fun? Here's why: The characters Barzun describes have not passed away. In this book you'll find cousins, neighbors, co-workers, and a mirror. You might expect politics, but this is a pithy tome, not fodder for a soapbox. The thoughts it sparks keep people musing for a long, long time, ... since the 40s, in fact.

Kris Wendtland
Wyoming Rural Electric News
September 2006