SOURCE: “What Did You Learn in School Today?” in Washington Post Book World, September 9, 1973, p. 4.

In the following mixed assessment of Unlearning the Lie, Jacoby considers Harrison's reportage incomplete, asserting that “she may have been too close to the situation to realize that she had left so many unanswered questions.”

It is a truism among educators that girls do better than boys in the early years of school because they are “verbally oriented” and therefore have an easier time learning to read. At some point, usually in early adolescence, the boys begin to catch up, and by the end of formal education, the position of the sexes in academic achievement has been reversed. One of my favorite college professors attested to this syndrome when he told me: “My girl students are more diligent, but the most brilliant ones are usually boys.”

Whether the professor was a male chauvinist...