Christopher Rush

This is a great book, though its beneficial audience is limited to educators, students, people who haven’t been educated, people who are being educated, people who should be educated, and people who need to be educated.  Thus, the audience is, well, everyone.  It’s one of those indispensable books, whose declarations about the sorry state of education and the ideal ways to ameliorate most problems are made even more frightening and sorrow-filling when the reader notices the book was written in 1943.  Education at the Crossroads is even more necessary than it was 70 years ago — something that can’t be said about too many education books.  It is dated only in fleeting moments, which adds to the tragedy of the intervening years: why didn’t anyone listen to him?

I wish I read this book 10 years ago, but there’s also the possibility I might not have been “ready” for it then, so better late than never, I suppose.  Maritain is correct about many things: the purpose of education, what schooling/education are not, the importance of understanding God and humanity for any education to work, and a slew of other things too numerous and adroitly explained by him that any brief treatment here will only perform injustice on the work and the author.  Not everyone will approve of his suggested curriculum and proposed age/school year alignment — in fact, most contemporary educationalists (the ones who get paid to make decisions and, like the characters in Peter Jackson’s version of The Two Towers, make only wrong decisions) will decry and rail and lament and ridicule (if they are willing to read a book that isn’t in e-format and doesn’t appear on any Common Core tests).  That’s one sure-fire way of knowing this is a book to read and incorporate into one’s soul.  It is not perfect, but it will help you understand reality better.