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The Graves of Academe
Twenty-odd years ago, Richard Mitchell, a professor at New Jersey's Glassboro State College, set out on a quixotic pursuit: the rescue of the English language and the minds of those attached to the world by it. Donning cape and mask as The Underground Grammarian, Mitchell sallied forth upon his newsletter against the nonsense being spoken, written, and, indeed, encouraged by the educational establishment. (One thing led to another, as he tells it, a front page piece in The Wall Street Journal, a proÞle in Time, and other such. Before it was over, The Underground Grammarian came to be, in the world of desktop printing, the first publication to have subscribers on every continent except Antarctica.) What began as a vivid catalog of ignorance and inanity in the written work of professional educators and their hapless students soon became an enterprise of most noble moment: an investigation, via mordant wit and Þerce intelligence, of what we might usefully decide to mean by `education.' The results of Mitchell's inquiries are as stimulating today as they were when Þrst articulated. His project remains a telling explication of how, through writing, we discover thought and make knowledge. It is certainly the most drolly entertaining.
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
Richard Mitchell
47 books16 followers Richard Mitchell was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He received his higher education, for a brief time, at the University of Chicago, where he met his wife, Francis; then at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa; and Syracuse University, where he earned his PhD. in American Literature.
Dr. Mitchell came to Glassboro State College in 1963 and retired in 1991, but continued to teach part-time until Fall 2001.
In addition to his reputation as a masterful lecturer, and extraordinary teacher, Dr. Mitchell was a prolific and well known author. He first gained prominence as the writer, publisher, and printer of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter that offered lively, witty, satiric, and often derisive essays on the misuse of the English language, particularly the misuse of written English on college campuses. Many of the essays have been collected and are still in print. Dr. Mitchell went on to publish four books: Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, The Leaning Tower of Babel, and The Gift of Fire.
One member of the Glassboro College (now Rowan University) Physics Dept. said, "He has done more to advance the reputation of Glassboro State College than anything since the Lyndon Johnson/Aleksei Kosygin Summit Conference of June 1967."
Dr. Mitchell came to Glassboro State College in 1963 and retired in 1991, but continued to teach part-time until Fall 2001.
In addition to his reputation as a masterful lecturer, and extraordinary teacher, Dr. Mitchell was a prolific and well known author. He first gained prominence as the writer, publisher, and printer of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter that offered lively, witty, satiric, and often derisive essays on the misuse of the English language, particularly the misuse of written English on college campuses. Many of the essays have been collected and are still in print. Dr. Mitchell went on to publish four books: Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, The Leaning Tower of Babel, and The Gift of Fire.
One member of the Glassboro College (now Rowan University) Physics Dept. said, "He has done more to advance the reputation of Glassboro State College than anything since the Lyndon Johnson/Aleksei Kosygin Summit Conference of June 1967."
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 23, 2008
I happened upon this book completely by accident. Imagine my surprise, then, to find a startling piece of white-hot truth burning in my unsuspecting hands. There were too many things in here that I agreed with to try to list them all. More importantly, though, this book exposed a vast number of pieces of the cultural puzzle that I have been trying to figure out since I first suffered, isolated and angry, through twelve years of public school education.
The genesis of the book began when the author, a college professor, decided to write a regular column detailing the silly grammatical stylings of many of his professor colleagues. Anyone familiar with higher education in the humanities will remember the kind of language which Mitchell choose to attack: the abstruse nomenclature and deliberately circular arguments, full of the passive voice, whose only purpose, in the end, is to try to make the writer sound scientific while at the same time releasing him from the hard task of saying anything of value.
As time went on, Mitchell found more and more of his easiest fodder coming from the realms of the departments of education in his and other schools. Why, he wondered, was this the case? This book is an attempt to answer that question.
A book criticizing departments of education? How dull can you get, you're probably thinking. Yet Mitchell is an extremely engaging writer, and the issue he's trying to tackle, while at first glance a problem confined only to teaching colleges, do in fact affect every one of us.
When I read any fiction book written before about the ninety fifties, and even in some cases slightly later ones, there seems to be an intelligence in the culture described that is no longer present today. Similarly, pick up a textbook from the fifties or sixties, if you can find one, and compare it to the textbooks you find in the schools today. The older books are thick with information. They look hard. The newer ones are thick with pictures, group study activities, warnings about the environment, and fawning attempts to convince the young student that all these things actually matter.
Mitchell explains all this, as well as why we are a culture who cares little for reading, knows nothing of science or mathematics or ethics or, most importantly, the quest for individual excellence that has been the cornerstone of every great society. He explains why we are obsessed with celebrities, why we no longer believe in free will, why we have become such slaves to authority. He charges that we are failures in living up to all the great traditions that we were supposed to inherit, be they Jewish, Christian, Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, or even the ideals of the American revolution.
But I have made a long list when all these things, in Mitchell's view, can be summed up in one word: education. Education, Mitchell argues, is what makes men free. That is its importance and its prime value. Without it, we are lost. And Mitchell thinks that we, for the moment at least, are very lost indeed.
The genesis of the book began when the author, a college professor, decided to write a regular column detailing the silly grammatical stylings of many of his professor colleagues. Anyone familiar with higher education in the humanities will remember the kind of language which Mitchell choose to attack: the abstruse nomenclature and deliberately circular arguments, full of the passive voice, whose only purpose, in the end, is to try to make the writer sound scientific while at the same time releasing him from the hard task of saying anything of value.
As time went on, Mitchell found more and more of his easiest fodder coming from the realms of the departments of education in his and other schools. Why, he wondered, was this the case? This book is an attempt to answer that question.
A book criticizing departments of education? How dull can you get, you're probably thinking. Yet Mitchell is an extremely engaging writer, and the issue he's trying to tackle, while at first glance a problem confined only to teaching colleges, do in fact affect every one of us.
When I read any fiction book written before about the ninety fifties, and even in some cases slightly later ones, there seems to be an intelligence in the culture described that is no longer present today. Similarly, pick up a textbook from the fifties or sixties, if you can find one, and compare it to the textbooks you find in the schools today. The older books are thick with information. They look hard. The newer ones are thick with pictures, group study activities, warnings about the environment, and fawning attempts to convince the young student that all these things actually matter.
Mitchell explains all this, as well as why we are a culture who cares little for reading, knows nothing of science or mathematics or ethics or, most importantly, the quest for individual excellence that has been the cornerstone of every great society. He explains why we are obsessed with celebrities, why we no longer believe in free will, why we have become such slaves to authority. He charges that we are failures in living up to all the great traditions that we were supposed to inherit, be they Jewish, Christian, Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, or even the ideals of the American revolution.
But I have made a long list when all these things, in Mitchell's view, can be summed up in one word: education. Education, Mitchell argues, is what makes men free. That is its importance and its prime value. Without it, we are lost. And Mitchell thinks that we, for the moment at least, are very lost indeed.
April 27, 2013
This book is erudite and outrageously funny. And it is one of the best books I've ever read. Were I to list all of the thousands of books I've read in a very bookish and long life, and rank them according to their importance in shaping me into the man I am today, it would be among the top ten or twenty. My children are all grown with children of their own. All of my grandchildren are being kept out of the public schools and being schooled at home. Their parents were reared completely outside of the public education system and home schooled by me, largely as a result of attitudes that were solidified by my reading of this marvelous book. In it he says, "A magnificent education, as countless examples attest, can come from nothing more than reading and writing." (Richard Mitchell. The Graves of Academe) He points out that less than thirty minutes per day is spent reading and writing in the typical public school setting.
I could not speak too highly of this book. If we want our children to become politically indoctrinated and highly conditioned in groupthink, send them to public school. If we want them to be educated, we must do it ourselves. Highly recommended.
I could not speak too highly of this book. If we want our children to become politically indoctrinated and highly conditioned in groupthink, send them to public school. If we want them to be educated, we must do it ourselves. Highly recommended.
November 19, 2013
This book, and Mitchell's other work entitled The leaning tower of Babel and other affronts by the Underground grammarian are the most caustic, depressing, funny and no-holds-barred assaults on the educational establishment that I have ever read.
If you are a public school teacher living day to day with the outrageous stupidities that are foisted upon you ad nauseam by "educationists," this book will provide you with some welcome relief.
If you have ever pulled your hair out in frustration at the jargon-crammed, incomprehensible and just plain silly language used by educational bureaucrats, read this book!
If you are a public school teacher living day to day with the outrageous stupidities that are foisted upon you ad nauseam by "educationists," this book will provide you with some welcome relief.
If you have ever pulled your hair out in frustration at the jargon-crammed, incomprehensible and just plain silly language used by educational bureaucrats, read this book!
February 16, 2020
Condescending. Arrogant. Sarcastic. Angry. I agree with what he says about the education system in America but cannot get past how he says it. This is on the Ambleside Online list for high school, but I’m not going to assign it to my kids (or maybe I'll just assign the last two chapters). There are better sources for this information without the attitude. Plus, it really could have been a quarter of the length.
————————————————————-
Some good quotes:
There is an important principle to be drawn here: many of our supposed “ideas” are in fact recitations, recitations not of what we think or understand but of what we simply believe that we believe. Thinking is done in language, and understanding, a result of thinking, is expressed in language, but, when we simply adopt and recite what has been expressed, we have committed neither thinking nor understanding.
...
Literacy is not, as it is considered in our schools, a portion of education. It is education. It is at once the ability and the inclination of the mind to find knowledge, to pursue understanding, not out of received attitudes and values or emotional responses, however “worthy,” to make judgments. Literate people are not easy prey. They do know an inference from a statement of fact. They are not easily persuaded by pretended authority. They are attentive to the natural requirements of logic. They can make distinctions, very fine distinctions, and are able both to notice and to examine their own predispositions and even their only presumably “right emotional responses.” To say that young human beings are incapable of such powers is elitism.
...
It is instructive to notice that when dissidents are unmasked in the schools, it is usually because of a book. I mean, of course, a book, not a textbook. A book is the permanent record of the work of a solitary human mind, to be read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested by another solitary human mind. A committee can no more make a book than it can play violin, but almost every "book" used in schools - and in teacher-training academies - is written collectively and for collective purposes. The makers of schoolbooks are "writers" only in the sense that the sign painter who labels bathroom doors is a "writer," or the pilot who draws in the sky slogans in smoke. Such messages - enormously dignified in schools as "communications" - can never, however long and seemingly complex they become, provide the substance of anything more than collective training. Education comes from books. And it goes into books. Education arises when one mind ponders the work of another. Thus, since the elements and circumstances of an education are beyond number, since all minds are different not only from one another but even from their earlier selves, there is no end to understanding, no final judgment. And that is why books are so scarce in schools and why a teacher can find himself pariah in the "academic" enterprise because of an essay by Aristotle. The schools are devoted to collective conclusions, what that superintendent calls "standards," and not to the interminable (and to educationists "selfish and anti-social") ruminations of understanding and judgment.
A magnificent education, as countless examples attest, can come from nothing more than reading and writing. In the one we behold the work of the solitary mind, in the other we do it, but we do it in such a way that we can behold again, and understand, and judge, the work of a solitary mind - our own. In the cause of education, there are no substitutes for reading and writing, nor do they require any supplements.
————————————————————-
Some good quotes:
There is an important principle to be drawn here: many of our supposed “ideas” are in fact recitations, recitations not of what we think or understand but of what we simply believe that we believe. Thinking is done in language, and understanding, a result of thinking, is expressed in language, but, when we simply adopt and recite what has been expressed, we have committed neither thinking nor understanding.
...
Literacy is not, as it is considered in our schools, a portion of education. It is education. It is at once the ability and the inclination of the mind to find knowledge, to pursue understanding, not out of received attitudes and values or emotional responses, however “worthy,” to make judgments. Literate people are not easy prey. They do know an inference from a statement of fact. They are not easily persuaded by pretended authority. They are attentive to the natural requirements of logic. They can make distinctions, very fine distinctions, and are able both to notice and to examine their own predispositions and even their only presumably “right emotional responses.” To say that young human beings are incapable of such powers is elitism.
...
It is instructive to notice that when dissidents are unmasked in the schools, it is usually because of a book. I mean, of course, a book, not a textbook. A book is the permanent record of the work of a solitary human mind, to be read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested by another solitary human mind. A committee can no more make a book than it can play violin, but almost every "book" used in schools - and in teacher-training academies - is written collectively and for collective purposes. The makers of schoolbooks are "writers" only in the sense that the sign painter who labels bathroom doors is a "writer," or the pilot who draws in the sky slogans in smoke. Such messages - enormously dignified in schools as "communications" - can never, however long and seemingly complex they become, provide the substance of anything more than collective training. Education comes from books. And it goes into books. Education arises when one mind ponders the work of another. Thus, since the elements and circumstances of an education are beyond number, since all minds are different not only from one another but even from their earlier selves, there is no end to understanding, no final judgment. And that is why books are so scarce in schools and why a teacher can find himself pariah in the "academic" enterprise because of an essay by Aristotle. The schools are devoted to collective conclusions, what that superintendent calls "standards," and not to the interminable (and to educationists "selfish and anti-social") ruminations of understanding and judgment.
A magnificent education, as countless examples attest, can come from nothing more than reading and writing. In the one we behold the work of the solitary mind, in the other we do it, but we do it in such a way that we can behold again, and understand, and judge, the work of a solitary mind - our own. In the cause of education, there are no substitutes for reading and writing, nor do they require any supplements.
December 2, 2020
Richard Mitchell brings his critical insight to bear on the bureaucratic mess that we call public education. This book is 40 years old and it has not aged well. Mitchell's prose is, at times, overwrought, and he comes across as a pedant. He is definitely an English / classics professor and lives in an amazing ivory tower where textbooks are unnecessary. That's a great idea for English because all great works of literature concern themselves with life and the human situation. But what book on math or physics will a student read? Newton's Principia Mathematica has not aged well. A textbook with great scope and sequence is predigested so that students are exposed to more. The goal of the science teacher is not, and should not be, to produce budding experts in biology and chemistry. The sciences, especially in high school, are a means to an end for most, and an introduction to a lifelong pursuit for others.
For a classics professor, Mitchell spends very little time wrestling with what an education should be. He is still squarely situated in the ivory tower, and thus underestimates all non-literary education. He seems not to be aware of the oral nature of Homer or the Hebrew Scriptures, or the level of sophisticated reasoning required to create mechanical systems. He assumes that information retention equals education. But any graduate of the applied sciences: computer science, engineering, etc. knows that even a great education is still useless. The gap between comprehension and application is massive. Being able to derive a negative binomial statistic using calculus and linear algebra doesn't mean that you can actually use it, or even know when it should be used. A college degree proves that a person is relatively intelligent, relatively persistent, and relatively well-off. The real education begins when you start your career.
Those points aside, a few of Miller's central insights still ring true. The nature of bureaucracy is the same in 2020 as it was in Roman times, and so the prognosis is just as current, and just as disheartening in 2020 as it was in 1980. Education has become a massive bureaucracy and the cure is always more bureaucracy. Standards have suffered, special interests promoted, etc, etc. Worth reading some of it.
For a classics professor, Mitchell spends very little time wrestling with what an education should be. He is still squarely situated in the ivory tower, and thus underestimates all non-literary education. He seems not to be aware of the oral nature of Homer or the Hebrew Scriptures, or the level of sophisticated reasoning required to create mechanical systems. He assumes that information retention equals education. But any graduate of the applied sciences: computer science, engineering, etc. knows that even a great education is still useless. The gap between comprehension and application is massive. Being able to derive a negative binomial statistic using calculus and linear algebra doesn't mean that you can actually use it, or even know when it should be used. A college degree proves that a person is relatively intelligent, relatively persistent, and relatively well-off. The real education begins when you start your career.
Those points aside, a few of Miller's central insights still ring true. The nature of bureaucracy is the same in 2020 as it was in Roman times, and so the prognosis is just as current, and just as disheartening in 2020 as it was in 1980. Education has become a massive bureaucracy and the cure is always more bureaucracy. Standards have suffered, special interests promoted, etc, etc. Worth reading some of it.
May 26, 2022
This was a scathing critique of the American education system and the teacher-training institutions that perpetuate it. Mitchell asserts that instead of being concerned with passing on actual knowledge, the institution is concerned with “outcomes”, “appreciation”, and “right responses”— whatever that is.
I read this with my 15-year-old daughter for our homeschool as part of Ambleside Online’s Year 10 curriculum. She appreciated his point of view, and although she didn’t follow everything that he said, she understood the main points. Although we both found his tone entertaining, the sarcasm did get a little tiring after a while.
While this book was informative and thought-provoking, it was also disheartening. Education as a business has only gotten worse. Education as a dissemination of collectivism has only gotten worse. Education as a propaganda machine has only gotten worse.
My only critique of this book at this time is that I do not agree that education should be devoid of values. Yes, I agree that schools have no business teaching values that should be taught in the home (sex education, for example), but I do not believe that a valueless education is possible. Education is one human mind connecting with another human mind that passes on ideas. Ideas have values inherent in them. The fact that we are human necessarily means that values are inherent to our being. We are not machines. The question is, are we passing on true values according to the Word of God, the Creator, or are we passing on values that are in opposition to the created order?
I read this with my 15-year-old daughter for our homeschool as part of Ambleside Online’s Year 10 curriculum. She appreciated his point of view, and although she didn’t follow everything that he said, she understood the main points. Although we both found his tone entertaining, the sarcasm did get a little tiring after a while.
While this book was informative and thought-provoking, it was also disheartening. Education as a business has only gotten worse. Education as a dissemination of collectivism has only gotten worse. Education as a propaganda machine has only gotten worse.
My only critique of this book at this time is that I do not agree that education should be devoid of values. Yes, I agree that schools have no business teaching values that should be taught in the home (sex education, for example), but I do not believe that a valueless education is possible. Education is one human mind connecting with another human mind that passes on ideas. Ideas have values inherent in them. The fact that we are human necessarily means that values are inherent to our being. We are not machines. The question is, are we passing on true values according to the Word of God, the Creator, or are we passing on values that are in opposition to the created order?
November 22, 2020
They say the earths core is 10,830F. That's nothing compared to the roasts Mitchell comes up with for the modern educationists.
In actuality, though this book is funny and has some very excellent parts most of it is less interesting or valuable than it could be. The first few chapters and the last quarter are perhaps the best parts. They provide some background for why the education system is the way it is and where it may go.
Other than that though, he puts forward very few sources other than his own writing. If you really want to understand what this book is about, read it, then do your own research. Public education sucks and every public schooled student I know says so. If you want to know why ask them and their teachers and you will hear veiled stories through which the truth of this book can be seen.
Do I think the information in this book needs to spread and learned? Yes.
Do I think this is the book you should read to learn it? Maybe.
In actuality, though this book is funny and has some very excellent parts most of it is less interesting or valuable than it could be. The first few chapters and the last quarter are perhaps the best parts. They provide some background for why the education system is the way it is and where it may go.
Other than that though, he puts forward very few sources other than his own writing. If you really want to understand what this book is about, read it, then do your own research. Public education sucks and every public schooled student I know says so. If you want to know why ask them and their teachers and you will hear veiled stories through which the truth of this book can be seen.
Do I think the information in this book needs to spread and learned? Yes.
Do I think this is the book you should read to learn it? Maybe.
July 9, 2021
Mere information. Love this section by Mitchell. Educationists emphasise that once a teacher knows how to teach they can teach anything. Knowledge is just mere information. Just learn it the night before class and she’ll be right. Good luck with Astro physics is all I can say.
Excellent thoughts that what should be taught is what can be objectively measured rather than the latest morality.
Excellent thoughts that what should be taught is what can be objectively measured rather than the latest morality.
April 21, 2018
Pure oxygen 😊
JV
JV
March 1, 2019
And I thought John Taylor Gatto was scathing on the state of education!
July 30, 2021
Entertaining but sad book on the collapse of our education system and the brainwashing of children. Nope, I'm not going to college.
June 18, 2023
Written in the early 80s and our schools have all the exact same problems. Incredible.
October 4, 2019
Perhaps more than in any of his other works, Mitchell’s acid wit entertains, provokes and educates. His skewering of the educationists’ grammar, spelling and style (or lack thereof) and their jargon-besotted programs is done in service of a higher purpose: to draw attention to the massive failure of the system to educate the students entrusted to it. The consequences of that failure are devastating and, ironically, a boon to the very system that fails them. Even if you care nothing for the education system or its failures, read this book if you are concerned about being a thoughtful human being.
Mitchell’s crystal clear and caustic prose is better quoted than discussed. So, here are some of my favorite passages from his book.
On the educationists’ self-defense: "When the public finally noticed, for instance, that fewer and fewer children were learning to read, the educationists quickly discovered that 'learning disabilities' were far more common than anyone had ever suspected. Therefore, we ought in fact to praise the schools for doing such a great job with swarms of undernourished, disaffected imbeciles, many of whom were also myopic, hard of hearing, hyperactive (if not lethargic), or even lacking in self-esteem."
On the value of books: "Education comes from books. And it goes into books. Education arises when one mind ponders the work of another…. A magnificent education, as countless examples attest, can come from nothing more than reading and writing. In the one we behold the work of the solitary mind, in the other we do it, but we do it in such a way that we can behold again, and understand, and judge, the work of a solitary mind - our own."
On the value of literacy: "Literate people are not easy prey. They do know an inference from a statement of fact. They are not easily persuaded by pretended authority. They are attentive to the natural requirements of logic. They can make distinctions, very fine distinctions, and are able both to notice and to examine their own predispositions…."
On the baneful influence of ideology on education: "When we study history from a certain point of view, we do not study history. If our students someday discover, as in fact they will, that we were sometimes mistaken in our knowledge of history, they will probably forgive us. But if they discover, as in fact they do, that we have misrepresented or omitted knowledge in the service of some values, they will learn to distrust both us and those values, as indeed they should - and apparently do."
Jefferson on literacy: "When Jefferson spoke of that literacy that would provide 'informed discretion,' he did not mean the ability to read the instructions for assembling a swing set or even for assembling a nuclear power generating plant. He did not mean the ability to write a correctly punctuated letter of application for a job. He did not mean the ability to devise, or even to 'appreciate,' advertisements that 'use words to create images.' He did not mean the habit of worthy emotional response to literature. In short, he did not mean any, or even all taken together, of those 'skills' that we now put forth as studies in communications or language arts. He did mean certain habits and powers of the individual mind, habits and powers that can be learned and refined only by long practice in reading and writing."
Mitchell’s crystal clear and caustic prose is better quoted than discussed. So, here are some of my favorite passages from his book.
On the educationists’ self-defense: "When the public finally noticed, for instance, that fewer and fewer children were learning to read, the educationists quickly discovered that 'learning disabilities' were far more common than anyone had ever suspected. Therefore, we ought in fact to praise the schools for doing such a great job with swarms of undernourished, disaffected imbeciles, many of whom were also myopic, hard of hearing, hyperactive (if not lethargic), or even lacking in self-esteem."
On the value of books: "Education comes from books. And it goes into books. Education arises when one mind ponders the work of another…. A magnificent education, as countless examples attest, can come from nothing more than reading and writing. In the one we behold the work of the solitary mind, in the other we do it, but we do it in such a way that we can behold again, and understand, and judge, the work of a solitary mind - our own."
On the value of literacy: "Literate people are not easy prey. They do know an inference from a statement of fact. They are not easily persuaded by pretended authority. They are attentive to the natural requirements of logic. They can make distinctions, very fine distinctions, and are able both to notice and to examine their own predispositions…."
On the baneful influence of ideology on education: "When we study history from a certain point of view, we do not study history. If our students someday discover, as in fact they will, that we were sometimes mistaken in our knowledge of history, they will probably forgive us. But if they discover, as in fact they do, that we have misrepresented or omitted knowledge in the service of some values, they will learn to distrust both us and those values, as indeed they should - and apparently do."
Jefferson on literacy: "When Jefferson spoke of that literacy that would provide 'informed discretion,' he did not mean the ability to read the instructions for assembling a swing set or even for assembling a nuclear power generating plant. He did not mean the ability to write a correctly punctuated letter of application for a job. He did not mean the ability to devise, or even to 'appreciate,' advertisements that 'use words to create images.' He did not mean the habit of worthy emotional response to literature. In short, he did not mean any, or even all taken together, of those 'skills' that we now put forth as studies in communications or language arts. He did mean certain habits and powers of the individual mind, habits and powers that can be learned and refined only by long practice in reading and writing."
February 23, 2023
Requiem for American Literacy
Nearly forty years ago, Richard Mitchell wrote this preternaturally prescient prognostication of the decline and death of the ability of Americans to construct grammatical sentences -- far less ones imbued with the exquisite elegance of his own inimitably well-tempered prose. I read it then, and eighteen months ago, I purchased a kindle ebook edition in an access of nostalgia (or indulgence of melancholy in contemplation of the aftermath of the national lobotomy visited upon us by our kakistocratic overlords, as they've done everything short of burning down each several school in the country to exterminate the last vestiges of literacy in the American public -- and for very obvious reasons). Imagine my non-existent surprise, then, when I discovered that said edition was no longer being offered for sale electronically (though legacy tree editions may yet be obtained by the seven or eight people still capable of reading them)! The humanities have been condemned to extinction (as has humanity, itself), but if you want to mourn this very inconvenient truth in gaping awestruck at the kind of language that English professors *used* to be able to write, you could do worse as a parting gesture than to pick up one of the copies of this book to which Montag has not yet set a match. It has, of course, been scrubbed from the agenda2030-compliant, internet-based noösphere.
Nearly forty years ago, Richard Mitchell wrote this preternaturally prescient prognostication of the decline and death of the ability of Americans to construct grammatical sentences -- far less ones imbued with the exquisite elegance of his own inimitably well-tempered prose. I read it then, and eighteen months ago, I purchased a kindle ebook edition in an access of nostalgia (or indulgence of melancholy in contemplation of the aftermath of the national lobotomy visited upon us by our kakistocratic overlords, as they've done everything short of burning down each several school in the country to exterminate the last vestiges of literacy in the American public -- and for very obvious reasons). Imagine my non-existent surprise, then, when I discovered that said edition was no longer being offered for sale electronically (though legacy tree editions may yet be obtained by the seven or eight people still capable of reading them)! The humanities have been condemned to extinction (as has humanity, itself), but if you want to mourn this very inconvenient truth in gaping awestruck at the kind of language that English professors *used* to be able to write, you could do worse as a parting gesture than to pick up one of the copies of this book to which Montag has not yet set a match. It has, of course, been scrubbed from the agenda2030-compliant, internet-based noösphere.
September 20, 2012
I wish I could give this a better review. I also wish this book had more sources to base its wild, and at times blatantly inaccurate claims [ex: phonics are no longer taught to children in schools]- or at least use sources that are not his own Journal, the Underground Grammarian. His arguments would also hold much more validity if he didn't constantly use the same vague languages he constantly deplores. What a shame this book is, in that it does not answer the question WRITTEN ON ITS COVER, but instead skirts around these issues, insulting various educationists for their own poor grammar.
April 5, 2010
Superb. With regard to "educators" it shakes the scales from your eyes (and tongue) and sets your mind back on an uncluttered path to clarity and purpose in teaching (anybody, anything.) Should be required reading for ALL "educators" (how I hate that word.)
August 20, 2014
A "bold, innovative thrust" in the realm of books on modern American education.
Wickedly funny and simultaneously alarming, Mitchell's commentary on the hopelessness of the American education system provides a ray of hope for the other "dissidents" in The System. We are not alone.
Wickedly funny and simultaneously alarming, Mitchell's commentary on the hopelessness of the American education system provides a ray of hope for the other "dissidents" in The System. We are not alone.
March 7, 2013
This book provides a disturbing and accurate look at how the school system in America was formed and it's real purpose. All of Ritchard Mitchell's excellent books are available FREE online at his request.
April 1, 2016
A must read for those who want to educate; the simple things about education (broad literacy) and how we mess them up; especially a must read for conservatives who think education is learning the "right" things.
May 22, 2009
Excellent.
August 20, 2011
I read this book almost a decade ago, but its acerbic wit and brutal clarity were great. The moral of the story is that education is great, but educationism is really, really bad.
December 10, 2013
I loved this book.
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