SOURCE: “Perennial Difficulties,” in Education Digest, Vol. 58, No. 2, November, 1992, pp. 39-40.

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

I have just spent a few very enjoyable weeks in the company of a remarkable mind; I have been reading Jacques Barzun's Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning. This is a collection of 15 essays written over a number of years and published in this collection this year by The University of Chicago Press. I have been reading little sections to my car pool, to my departmental colleagues, and to my wife.

I admit freely that one reason I enjoyed Barzun's book so much is that he and I share some of the same prejudices. For example, machine-scored tests.

Barzun says, “I think its use harmful to teaching and learning, both. I know all the arguments in favor of these so-called objective tests...