THE PET GOAT APPROACH.(The Talk of the Town)('The Pet Goat,' read by class to George W. Bush after he learned of Sept. 11 attacks, is a workbook exercise used in the Direct Instruction method of teaching developed by Siegfried Engelmann in the 1960s)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 26-JUL-04

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Although you do not know his name, Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann is one of the most talked-about authors in the country right now. His most prominent work, which you have not read, is a story for second graders. It begins, "A girl got a pet goat."

Engelmann's story is the one that George W. Bush was reading in a Florida classroom on the morning of September 11, 2001, at the moment he learned of the terrorist attacks. A videotape of the President holding the book open while staring blankly into space for seven minutes provides the most memorable scene in Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." Engelmann has not seen the film, but when he...

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