Notes from a Controversialist

"A reactionary--that is, a conservative who is not cute," is Donald Barr's own description of himself. To some of the militantly progressive parents of Manhattan's prestigious Dalton School, the very word reactionary is anathema, and some of the methods Barr has imposed on the generally permissive Dalton system in his seven years as headmaster have aroused fierce controversy. Just three months ago, dissident parents mounted a major effort to oust him, and were only narrowly defeated.

Judging from the contents of his new book, Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? Dilemmas in American Education Today, Headmaster Barr relishes such controversy. His collection of short essays and book reviews is by turns irritating, perceptive and amusing. It is also the work of a man who cares deeply about children and their education. Some excerpts:

DISCIPLINE. "Few of us like to think about discipline. To the modern liberal mind, the word has an almost pornographic sound. But discipline is necessary to freedom . . . Though discipline and freedom seem antithetical, each without the other destroys itself. In painting, craft without imagination is sterile, and imagination without craft aborts its image ... In government, order without dissent stagnates, and rebellion without law makes chaos, and both are despotic."

PARENTS. "The rules of parenthood are simple enough: Be an adult and enjoy being an adult. Do not permit what you do not soberly approve. Set limits and see that they are kept. When should a parent turn over authority to the child? When the child stops reaching for authority and reaches for responsibility, and not before." STUDENT RADICALS. "I believe that unearned approval in childhood is the source of three traits common among the student radicals: 1) They are far less argumentative than young radicals used to be. Arguing takes listening. 2) They read surprisingly little, although they know of a great many books. 3) They lack humor. Humor takes humility. A sense of humor is based on seeing and accepting human nature as stumbling, pretentious, and forever bedeviled. When I hear boys and girls call their parents 'hypocrites' (a favorite word), I know I am looking at humorless --and therefore dangerous--children."

THE UNDERACHIEVER. "The method of forestalling underachievement is to hold before the child at all times the allure and satisfaction of competence. If the home cannot do it, the school must, somehow. Success is always defined by the child as being the center of attention for the universe or some portion of it. So once a child discovers that he becomes a center of concern and attention by being incompetent, it is tragically easy for him to play this incompetence and acquire strength through weakness."

VOCATIONAL STUDIES. "Courses in 'life adjustment'--driver safety, consumer education--should be reserved for those children whose innate abilities are such that they can do nothing with life but adjust to it ... Indeed the whole intrusion of vocational training into high schools should be given a hard, cold look."

GRAMMAR. "I am a linguistic pessimist. Unguided, our language will degenerate into more and more debilitating imprecision. I hold that for every instance of evolution toward precision there are three cases of devolution into sloppiness . . . Grammar and syntax can teach one how to make words behave, not just correctly, but interestingly, tellingly, gracefully, efficiently, variously." SEX. "The community has a stake in one's interpersonal relations, because it is a fabric woven of such relations. The adolescent must not be allowed to argue that he can do what he wants to with his own body. His body is not his alone, since he owes something to the phylogeny that has endowed it and to the society that has arranged for its protection and nourishment." He is critical of sex education, finding its presentation too heavy on biology, too light on understanding.

Some of Barr's notions show more passion than thought. What, for instance, is a "dangerous child"? And some of his ideas about sex sound as if they came from a manifesto issued by a corporate state. Still, he is eminently readable and endlessly provocative.

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