Arthur Bestor

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  news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20071004/cm_huffpost/067129 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/4/2007    Last Visited: 10/4/2007  

  In late 1956, U. S. News & World Report ran an interview with historian Arthur Bestor, author of Educational Wastelands: The Retreat From Learning in Public Schools, under the headline, "We Are Less Educated now than 50 Years Ago?"Shortly after Sputnik, the magazine brought him back to explain "What Went Wrong With U.S. Schools."Mostly the fault rested with the misguided spin-off from progressive education known as "life-adjustment education.""In the light of Sputnik," said Bestor, "'life adjustment education' turns out to have been perilously close to 'death adjustment' for our nation and our children."Life-adjustment education wastes time on trivialities.

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  BE Online Edition - October 2002 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/1/2002    Last Visited: 10/13/2004  

  Arthur Bestor,Historian and Founder of CBE,

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  Center For State Scholars - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 7/1/1994    Last Visited: 11/21/2005  

  Such trends tended to mute criticism by Bestor and others because high school leaders routinely pointed out that more students were taking academic courses than ever before and because the high schools were supplying enough students to fill college classrooms.
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  Arthur Bestor, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953/1985).
  
  National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 1988 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), pp.10, 98, 141, 142.

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  Education Next - It's the Teachers, Stupid! by Gerald... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/22/2003    Last Visited: 2/7/2005  

  Conant spoke after the job training of Bobbitt and Charters had merged into the "life adjustment" curriculum that was ridiculed in a 1950s bestseller by historian Arthur Bestor as a "regressive education" having severed all real connection with science and learning.

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  Focus: High Impact Philanthropy for Education Reform - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/24/1999    Last Visited: 7/7/2003  

  Perhaps the most influential of these critics was Arthur Bestor, a University of Illinois historian who authored Educational Wastelands in 1953.Disparaging the work of his university colleagues in formulating the curriculum for "life adjustment-education," he instead called for teachers to get a firm grounding in the liberal arts and sciences.34 Bestor also proposed eliminating special schools for teachers and raising teacher certification requirements.
  
  Bestor was not content simply to publish his views, but also tried to enlist nonprofit groups to put them into effect.In 1952, for example, he proposed that the American Historical Association foster "sound intellectual training in the public schools," but his plan for a "Permanent Commission on Secondary Education" was rejected by its governing council.35 Four years later, however, with support from foundations and wealthy individuals, he and Mortimer Smith created the Council for Basic Education, an organization that continues to promote reform of teacher education and raising curricular standards.
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  It led to the creation of new high schools with a plethora of offerings for their large numbers of students, as well as the consolidation of many smaller ones.49 But at the same time, critics such as Arthur Bestor and Mortimer Smith worried that in the pursuit of comprehensiveness, schools might give short-shrift to educational quality, especially for the most gifted students.
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  34 Arthur Bestor, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985): 138.

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  PRACTICAL POLITICS, by Professor Oliver, cont'd - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 7/27/2001    Last Visited: 4/1/2004  

  (2. In the 1950s, Professor Arthur Bestor, the American historian, and I noticed that in our respective departments the 'A' and 'B' students who had entered with the intention of teaching in secondary schools all changed their minds when they had to take the required courses in the "science of education," usually in their junior year, and decided to become librarians or accountants or lawyers or laboratory technicians.

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  PRACTICAL POLITICS, by Professor Oliver, cont'd - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 7/18/2001    Last Visited: 2/22/2003  

  (2. In the 1950s, Professor Arthur Bestor, the American historian, and I noticed that in our respective departments the 'A' and 'B' students who had entered with the intention of teaching in secondary schools all changed their minds when they had to take the required courses in the "science of education," usually in their junior year, and decided to become librarians or accountants or lawyers or laboratory technicians.We consulted the ranking member of the swarm of deans in the "College of Education," who naively told us, "We prefer the 'C' grade students because they do not question what we tell them.")

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  PRACTICAL POLITICS, by Professor Oliver, cont'd - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/3/2001    Last Visited: 4/27/2002  

  (2. In the 1950s, Professor Arthur Bestor, the American historian, and I noticed that in our respective departments the 'A' and 'B' students who had entered with the intention of teaching in secondary schools all changed their minds when they had to take the required courses in the "science of education," usually in their junior year, and decided to become librarians or accountants or lawyers or laboratory technicians.We consulted the ranking member of the swarm of deans in the "College of Education," who naively told us, "We prefer the 'C' grade students because they do not question what we tell them.")

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  PUBLIC EDUCATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/15/2006    Last Visited: 5/17/2008  

  Foremost among the Life Adjustment critics was Arthur Bestor, a professor of history at the University of Illinois.Bestor's popular 1953 book was titled, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat From Learning in Our Public Schools.Note the word "retreat."This appears to be the first time that a critique of the schools harkened back to a previous time when conditions were better.
  
  Bestor loaded Wastelands with statistics to show that schools were, indeed retreating.He observed, for instance, that "Fifty years ago, half of all students in public schools were studying Latin; today less than a quarter are enrolled in courses in all foreign languages."Bestor failed to note that 50 years prior to his book, only 50% of students were enrolled in any school and only 7% of all students graduated from high school.
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  As with Bestor, Wilson saw failure and a decline from previous accomplishments:

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  PUBLIC EDUCATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/19/2001    Last Visited: 1/25/2002  

  Foremost among the Life Adjustment critics was Arthur Bestor, a professor of history at the University of Illinois.Bestor's popular 1953 book was titled, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat From Learning in Our Public Schools.Note the word "retreat."This appears to be the first time that a critique of the schools harkened back to a previous time when conditions were better.
  
  Bestor loaded Wastelands with statistics to show that schools were, indeed retreating.He observed, for instance, that "Fifty years ago, half of all students in public schools were studying Latin; today less than a quarter are enrolled in courses in all foreign languages."Bestor failed to note that 50 years prior to his book, only 50% of students were enrolled in any school and only 7% of all students graduated from high school.A quarter of the current crop of students was actually a higher proportion of all students than half of the students 50 years earlier.
  
  Thus, part of the sense of failure stemmed from criticism of attempts to adapt the school to what were referred to as the "new learners."A more important part of the sense of failure derived from America's changed role in the world.No longer able to retreat into isolationism, the U. S. now confronted the Soviet Union for ideological and technological domination of the globe, seeking to win the space and weapons races without destroying the globe in the process.Wrote the Committee on the Clear and Present Danger, "we need not only trained men but also the most modern weapons....This means we need both a reservoir of trained men and a continuing advance on every scientific and technical front."
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  As with Bestor, Wilson saw failure and a decline from previous accomplishments:
  
  The facts of the school crisis are all out and in plain sight and pretty dreadful to look at.First of all it has been shown that a surprisingly small percentage of high school students is studying what used to be considered basic subjects...People are complaining that the diploma has been devaluated to the point of meaninglessness....It is hard to deny that America's schools which were supposed to reflect one of history's noblest dreams and to cultivate the nation's youthful minds, have degenerated into a system for coddling and entertaining the mediocre.
  
  We can note here that the next great event in the history of school criticism, the publication in 1983 of "A Nation At Risk," discovered a "rising tide of mediocrity."But Wilson had found a similar current almost precisely 25 years earlier.We can note, too, that at the time there was precious little data about school performance, but what there was contradicted Wilson and other critics.

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