cover image Aristocracy of Everyone

Aristocracy of Everyone

Benjamin R. Barber. Ballantine Books, $20 (307pp) ISBN 978-0-345-37040-2

Barber (The Conquest of Politics), a professor of political science at Rutgers, asserts that education and democracy are inextricably linked in this wide-ranging examination of American schools and their place in our society. He cites the usable past of the American story and current advocacy of multicultural curricula as paradoxical aspects of democracy in action, and argues persuasively that public education is education for citizenship, a crucial goal for people in a pluralistic society. In his view, education for citizenship and self-governance coexist with excellence; his critique of conservative educator Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind is an arresting polemic. Barber's liberal views are thought-provoking and persuasive. (Oct.)