A Few Book Reviews

I recently reviewed two books that that each touch on the question of college - what should its purpose be and how society treats colleges graduates.

In The Battle of the Classics Eric Adler, a professor of classics at the University of Maryland, recalls an overlooked figure from the early 1930s who identified the risks of devaluing the humanities in college. His hero is Irving Babbitt, a classics major and teacher of comparative literature at Harvard for 40 years. If we heeded Babbitt’s call to put the humanities at the core of the college experience, and avoided the tactical errors he made, Adler argues, our civilization might yet be saved. To avoid “the abyss of tribalism and warmongering” in which we find ourselves we need to re-embrace the classics. My review for Education Next is here.

In The Genetic Lottery Kathryn Paige Harden, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, makes the case that progressives need to accept that our genes influence our academic success, a position often associated with conservatives. After studying human behaviors and our roughly 26,000 genes for 15 years, Harden concludes educational success is less about hard work, and more about the genes you inherited. She urges policies that decouple economic success from school success. Her economic proposals seem utopian but she has other ideas that make much sense. And if her ideas were paired with a stronger commitment to effective reading instruction the economic impact on those kids with unlucky genes would be tremendous. My review for Fordham Institute’s Flypaper is here