Shhh! It’s the Headmaster!

William J. Bennett is a man whom Charles Dickens would have understood and immortalized. He is David Copperfield’s kind of headmaster, a philosopher who intends to save some of the money that this nation now squanders on education by shaming young people into skipping college and going into some useful line of work.

Judging by news reports, he has already given thought to what he will tell his own son, now age 10 months, when the junior Bennett decides to take the $50,000 that it would cost him to go to Harvard and uses it to set up a little business. “I might think that was a good idea,” he said.

That at least would keep the young man from the evil ways of today’s college students whose substance, as William J. Bennett sees it, is frittered away on stereos, automobiles and long vacations at the beach.

Bennett’s 19th-Century view of students was presented in the course of defending President Reagan’s plan to disqualify 1 million students from low-interest federal loans, a move that would force many of them out of school and into useful lines of work.

“It is not self-evident,” Bennett said, “that the government has the responsibility to permit everyone to go to whatever college they want.”

See Charles Dickens scribble furiously. See William J. Bennett rubbing his hands as he goes for the cane. See the look of utter disbelief and delight on the face of Charles Dickens when he is told that William J. Bennett is the secretary of education of the United States of America, a nation whose future can be only as bright as the young people whom it can persuade to study hard and head for the beach after mid-terms.