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In Essence | Summer 1983
The Future of The Factory

The Future of Gene Bylinsky, in Fortune (Feb. 21, 1983),
3435 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif.

The Factory 90010.
The last major revolution in American manufacturing occurred when Henry Ford opened the first assembly line in 1913.Today, reports By- linsky, a Fortune editor, another big breakthrough is on the horizon.
Coming up are so-called flexible manufacturing systems. Conven- tional assembly lines are relatively rigid: Each machine performs a sin- gle, narrowly defined function. Any cha...

In Essence | Summer 1983
Countering Discrimination

Christopher Jencks, in The New York Re-Discrimination view ofBooks (March 3 and 17, 1983), P.O. Box 940, Farminedale, N.Y. 11737.
Are "affirmative action" quotas and other compensatory federal anti- discrimination efforts unnecessary?
Thomas Sowell, an influential black UCLA economist, believes they are, and his arguments in such books as Ethnic America (1981) have supported the Reagan administration's retreat from social activism. But Jencks, a Northwestern University sociologist, takes...

In Essence | Summer 1983
Revisiting the Housing Boom

excluding blacks from the pool of job candidates will be undercut competitors and forced to relent. Jencks concedes that this may be true in professional fields (such as law) where discrimina- tion is not universal. But he argues that lower-class black men may face increasing job discrimination as crime rates and other "statistical" stigmata of ghetto culture worsen.
Since 1965, affirmative action has raised minority employment by between six and 13 percent over what it would have been...

In Essence | Summer 1983
Where the Police Went Wrong

104 percent to $19,800. Mortgage
payments consumed 19 percent of family income in 1980, up modestly
from 17 percent in 1970. Renters fared less well. Average rents jumped
125 percent, consuming 27 percent of tenant income in 1980 as opposed
to 20 percent in 1970. And renters' family incomes in 1980 were only 67
percent of the US. average, while those of homeowners grew to 125
percent, widening a gap that first appeared during the 1940s.
More than half of all American blacks and Hispanics...

In Essence | Summer 1983
Debating How Children Learn

Kieran Egan, in Teachers College Rec-
ord (Winter 1982), Columbia Univ., 525
Children Learn West 120th St., New York, N.Y. 10027.
American educators have been strongly influenced the child devel- opment theories of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980). Yet Egan, professor of education at Canada's Simon Fraser University, con- tends that Piaget's evidence is seriously flawed.
Piaget held that children pass through four fixed stages of "logico- mathematical" development. Using...

In Essence | Summer 1983
An Invisible Man

Edward Jay Ep- stein, in The New Republic (Feb. 7, 1983), 1220 19th St. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Does Soviet Communist Party leader Yuri Andropov play tennis? Lis- ten to Glenn Miller records? Write comic verse?
Yes, U.S. newspapers told the American public in describing the former KGB chief last November when he succeeded Leonid Brezhnev. Yet virtually none of these piquant details can be verified, says Epstein, author of Between Fact and Fiction.
When he was head of the Soviet secret police,...

In Essence | Summer 1983
TV news Exposure And the Polls

the Post to have been entertained Andropov denies the story.
The early mistakes of the press, Epstein concludes, stemmed not from sinister Soviet "disinformation" but from its own uncritical thirst for "color," obligingly provided by self-appointed "Andropov experts." The newspapermen should simply have admitted their ignorance. "He [Andropov] stands at the head of Russia," says Epstein, "but we don't even know how tall."
"Television News...

In Essence | Summer 1983
The View from The Fringe

FredThe View from Barnes, in Washington Journalism Review The Fringe (Jan.-Feb. 1983), 2233 Wisconsin Ave.
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007.
Spokesmen for the New Right and their left-wing opponents seldom agree on anything, but on one matter they see eye to eye: The nation's major news organizations treat them unfairly, albeit in different ways.
One complaint is more common on the Right, writes Barnes, a Balti- more Sun reporter: Reporters tend to label its spokesmen as extremists. Right-wing activists...

In Essence | Summer 1983
Making Sense of Methodism

fits and convulsions-interpreted the faithful as a sign of the Holy Spir- it's presence-which further detracted from Wesley's image as a theolo- gian. But Wesley himself was skeptical of the value of such episodes: "I neither forward nor hinder them," he said.
In fact, says Dreyer, Wesley gave considerable thought to the nature of faith and human reason. His arguments closely paralleled those of
John Wesley's 1738 religious experience started him on the road to Methodism after 13 years...

In Essence | Summer 1983
A King Word For Death

Leon R. Kass, in The American Scholar (Spring For Death 1973), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.
Arresting the aging process and prolonging human life are top priori- ties of medical researchers. At first glance, such efforts seem an unqual- ified good, but Kass, a University of Chicago biologist, is troubled some of their implications.
The aging process, he says, prepares us for death. "Inasmuch as I no longer cling so hard to the good things of life when I begin to lose the use and...

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