ABSTRACT
At first glance they look downright insignificant—the kid fixers, the Supergrow brainfood crowd. Their product says what it is on the package, witness such hard-selling titles as these: How to Double Your Child’s Grades in School, How to Raise a Brighter Child, Give Your Child a Superior Mind, College Begins at Two, etc. None of the authors is famous. (The big sellers are Eugene M. Schwartz, Isabelle P. Buckley, Siegfried and Therese Engelmann, and Joan Beck.) None holds a top establishment job. (Mrs. Beck’s perch is the Chicago Trib, Schwartz is “in” Executive Training Techniques, Mrs. Buckley taught school in Hollywood and has some stars for fans, and Mr. and Mrs. Engelmann, the comers of the lot, fill a “research associates” slot in education at a making-it midwestern state U.) And as for the group’s moral as opposed to pedagogical assumptions, they’re as old as the Protestant Ethic—no ties with tricky New Thought—and rouse smiles as well as pain.
