...education is not merely schooling. It is a lifelong discipline of the individual by himself, encouraged by a reasonable opportunity to lead a good life. Education here is synonymous with civilization. A civilized community is better than the jungle, but civilization is a long slow process which cannot be "given" in a short course." - Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America, p. 9.
Love Barzun. I use From Dawn to Decadence as a main text in a high school omnibus class. His Use and Abuse of Art and Simple and Direct also have things I use. Very perspective man.
ReplyDeleteAs a former high-school English teacher, as well as the editor of the Jacques Barzun page on our website , I would very much like to learn more about Janice's use of Barzun's three books---especially the 'Use and Abuse of Art, for which we gave him a retroactive Aristos Award . (Click on "Annotated List of Winners," then search for "mellon"---without the quotation marks.) For my e-mail address, click on "About Aristos" on the journal's home page.
ReplyDeleteLouis Torres, Co-Editor, Aristos (An Online Review of the Arts)
Janice, when I read you say that you use FDTD as a high school text, I gasped, then swallowed very hard. Where do they make teenagers who can read and think at that level? That said, I think that the top track kids in a magnet school, or an elite private school like Atlanta's Westminster School, could benefit from reading 2-3 essays by Barzun, as examples of lucid and carefully crafted contemporary prose.
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