SOURCE: “The Plight of Pedagogy,” in Washington Post Book World, April 21, 1991, p. 3.

In the following review, Yardley offers a positive assessment of Begin Here.

It is difficult to imagine a more pungent, perceptive or eloquent commentary on contemporary American education than this collection of 15 pieces [Begin Here] by Jacques Barzun. Written over the past four decades, but mostly of fairly recent vintage, these essays and speeches all boil down to the book's opening words: “Forget EDUCATION. Education is a result, a slow growth, and hard to judge. Let us talk rather about Teaching and Learning, a joint activity that can be provided for, though as a nation we have lost the knack of it.” Or, as Barzun puts it many pages later:

“The error began with the replacement of the word pedagogy with the word education. Pedagogy is not a beautiful word, but it sticks to the point...