John Adams. Letters from a Distinguished American: Twelve Essays
by John Adams on American Foreign Policy, 1780. Compiled and
edited by James H. Hutson. Washington, DC: Library of Congress,
1978.
-. The Adams-Jefferson: the Complete Correspondence between
Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Lester J. Cappon,
editor). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. The American Challenge. Trans.
Robert Steel. With a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. New
York: Atheneum, 1968.
Neil Postman. Rising Tide of Illiteracy in the USA, in The
Washington Post, 1985.
"Whatever else may be said of the immigrants who settled in New
England in the 17th century, it is a paramount fact that they
were dedicated and skillful readers.... It is to be understood
that the Bible was the central reading matter in all households,
for these people were Protestants who shared Luther's belief that
printing was 'God's highest and extremest act of Grace, whereby
the business of the Gospel is driven forward.' But reading for
God's sake was not their sole motivation in bringing books into
their homes."
Lauran Paine. Captain John Smith and the Jamestown Story. London:
R. Hale, 1973.
Henry Steele Commager. The American Mind. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1950.
Charles Dickens. American Notes. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1985.
The book is a journal of Dickens's travels from Boston to St.
Louis, from January through June, 1842.
Alexis de Toqueville. Democracy in America, Vol. 1 (Henry Reeve
text as revised by Francis Bowen). New York: Vintage Books,
1945.
Several other writers have attempted to characterize the USA, or
at least some of its aspects:
Jean Baudrillard. Amérique. Paris: Grasset, 1986.
-. America. Chris Turner, London/New York: Verso, 1988.
Gerald Messadie. Requiem pour superman. La crise du mythe
américain. Paris: R. Laffont, 1988.
Rodó, José Enrique. Ariel. Liberalismo y Jacobinismo. Buenos
Aires: Ediciones Depalma, 1967.
In practically all her novels, Jane Austen extols the improvement
of the mind (especially the female mind) through reading; see
especially Pride and Prejudice, Vol. 1, chapter 8. (New York: The
New American Library, 1961, p. 35).
Thomas Jefferson. Autobiography, in Writings. New York: The
Library of America/Literary Classics of the United States, 1984.
Jefferson's father placed him in the English school when Thomas
was five years old, and at age nine in the Latin school, where
he learned Latin, Greek, and French until 1757. In 1758,
Jefferson continued two years of the same program of study with
a Reverend Maury. In 1760, he attended the College of William
and Mary (for two years), where he was taught by a Dr. William
Small of Scotland (a mathematician). His education consisted of
Ethics, Rhetoric, and Belles Lettres. In 1762, he began to
study law.
Joel Spring. The American School 1642-1990. 2nd ed. New
York/London: Longman, 1990.
Benjamin Franklin's model academy embodied his own education. "
'...it would be well if [students] could be taught every thing
that is useful, and every thing that is ornamental. But Art is
long, and their Time is short. It is therefore propos'd that
they learn those things that are likely to be most useful and
most ornamental.' [...] Franklin's early life was a model for
getting ahead in the New World [...] The 'useful' elements in
Franklin's education were the skills learned in apprenticeship
and through his reading. The 'ornamental? elements,... were the
knowledge and social skills learned through reading, writing, and
debating" (p. 23).
Theodore Sizer, editor. The Age of the Academics, New York:
Teachers College Press, 1964.
"The academy movement in North America was primarily a result of
the desire to provide a more utilitarian education as compared
with the education provided in classical grammar schools" (p.
22). Lester Frank Ward. The Psychic Factors of Civilization.
2nd ed. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1970. "The highest duty
of society is to see that every member receives a sound
education" (p. 308).
Transcendentalism: "A 19th century New England movement of
writers and philosophers who were loosely bound together by
adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in
the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man,
and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the
revelation of deepest truths." The main figures were Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller (cf.
Encyclopedia Britannica, Micropedia. 1990 ed.
Paul F. Boller. American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860. An
Intellectual Inquiry. New York: Putnam, 1974. Major
philosophers of pragmatics:
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Although no finished work
deals explicitly with his pragmatic conception, this conception
permeates his entire activity. His semiotics is the result of the
fundamental pragmatic philosophy he developed.
John Dewey (1859-1952). Dewey bases his pragmatic conception on
the proven useful. This explains why this conception was labeled
instrumentalism or pragmatics of verification. Among the works
where this is expressed are How We Think (1910), Logic, the
Theory of Inquiry (1938), Knowing and Known (1940).
William James (1842-1910). James expressed his pragmatic
conception from a psychological perspective. His main works
dedicated to pragmatism are Principles of Psychology (1890),
Pragmatism (1907), and The Meaning of Truth (1909).
Josiah Royce (1855-1916). He is the originator of a conception he
called absolute pragmatics.
John Sculley, ex-CEO of Apple Computer, Inc took the bully pulpit
for literacy (at President-elect Clinton's economic summit in
December, 1992), stating that the American economy is built on
ideas. He and other business leaders confuse ideas with
invention, which is their main interest, and for which literacy
is not really necessary.
Sidney Lanier. The Symphony, 1875, in The Poems of Sidney Lanier.
(Mary Day Lanier, editor). Athens: University of Georgia Press,
198.
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). American economist and social
scientist who sought to apply evolutionary dynamic approach to
the study of economic constructions. Best known for his work The
Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), in which he coined the term
conspicuous consumption.
Theodore Dreiser. American Diaries, 1902-1926. (Thomas P. Riggio,
editor). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
-. Sister Carrie (the Pennsylvania Edition). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
-. Essays. Selected magazine articles of Theodore Dreiser: Life
and art in the American 1890's. (Yoshinobu Hakutani, editor). 2
volumes. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1985-1987.
Henry James. The American Scene. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.
-. The Bostonians. London: John Lehmann Ltd. 1952.
"I wished to write a very American tale," James wrote in his
Notebook (two years prior to the publication of the novel in
1886). He also stated, "I asked myself what was the most salient
and peculiar point of our social life. The answer was: the
situation of women, the decline of the sentiment of sex...."
Henry Steele Commager. The American Mind. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1950.
In the section aptly entitled "The Literature of Revolt,"
Commager noticed that the tradition of protest and revolt
(dominant in American literature since Emerson and Thoreau)
turned, at the beginning of the 20th century (that is, with the
New Economics), into an almost unanimous repudiation of the
economic order. "...most authors portrayed an economic system
disorderly and ruthless, wasteful and inhumane, unjust alike to
working men, investors, and consumers, politically corrupt and
morally corrupting," (p. 247). He goes on to name William Dean
Howell (with his novels), Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and others. In the same vein,
Denis Brogan (The American Character), J.T. Adams (Our Business
Civilization), Harold Stearns (America: A Reappraisal), Mary A.
Hamilton (In America Today), André Siegfried (America Comes of
Age) are also mentioned.
Howard Gardner. Frames of Mind: Theory of Multiple
Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Diane Ravitch. The Schools We Deserve. New York: Doubleday,1985.
Peter Cooper (1791-1883). Self-taught entrepreneur and inventor.
As head of North American Telegraph Works, he made a fortune
manufacturing glue and establishing iron works. In 1830, his
experimental locomotive made its first 13-mile run.
The Corcoran case. The incredible secret of John Corcoran, 20/20,
ABC News, April 1, 1988. (Text by byTranscripts: Journal
Graphics, Inc. pp. 11-14.)
Noah Webster. The American Spelling Book: containing an easy
standard of pronunciation. Being the first part of a
Grammatical Institute of the English Language. Boston: Isaiah
Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews, 1793.
William Holmes McGuffey. McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic First
Reader: containing progressive lessons in reading and spelling
(revised and improved by Wm. H. McGuffey). Cincinnati: Winthrop
B. Smith, 1853. It is doubtful that all the clever remarks
attributed to Yogi Berra came from him. What matters is the dry
sense of humor and logical irreverence that make these remarks
another form of Americana.
Akiro Morita, et al. Made in Japan. New York: Dutton, 1989.
United We Stand, the political interest group founded by H. Ross
Perot, is probably another example of how difficult it is, even
for those who take an active stand (no matter how
controversial), to break the dualistic pattern of political life
in the USA. This group became the Reform Party.
Gottfried Benn. Sämtliche Werke. (Gerhard Schuster, editor).
Vols. 3-5 (Prosa). Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1986.
Benn maintains that the language crisis is actually the
expression of the crisis of the white man.
Andrei Toom. A Russian Teacher in America, in Focus, 16:4,
August 1996, pp. 9-11 (reprint of the same article appearing in
the June 1993 issue of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior and
then in the Fall 1993 issue of American Educator).
Among the many articles dealing with American students' attitudes
towards required subject matter, this is one of the most
poignant. It involves not literature, philosophy, or history, but
mathematics. The author points out not only the expectations of
students and educational administrators, but also the methods in
which the subject matter is treated in textbooks. Interestingly
enough, he recounts his experience with students in a state
university, where generalized, democratic access to mediocrity is
equated with education.