The Relevance of Education: By Jerome S. Bruner. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1971. 175 pp.

Jerome S. Bruner is an eminent psychologist and educator. In this book he characterizes the present educational crisis as an expression of a struggle between an ennobled child and an ignoble teacher. His requirements for tutorial skills are modest. Bruner assumes that teachers will 'invent for the child modes of access to the empowering techniques of the culture'. He insists that teachers and schools assume responsibility for the intellectual growth of the child. He asks that teachers be intuitive and innovative. As for the children, he believes that they are well motivated for education and he has been forcibly struck by their avidity to make hypotheses.

At this point the teacher becomes the villain who robs the children of an opportunity to indulge their needs to hypothesize. It is the teacher who has weakened the educational structure, who does not allow children to develop their intuitive faculties. Bruner's grievances against teachers multiply: they do not know how to teach; they do not prevent useless learning; they become involved 'in near sadistic dissections' of their pupils; they teach