“The same might have been said not only of Time itself but of most of the American popular press. All over the land of the free, hip little film critics were celebrating the exhibition of Mr. Ripploh’s lower orifices with the words and phrases they’d memorized while studying for their Master’s degrees. ‘The latest film …
Looking Out the Window
“Whenever we run into this uncomfortable thing called work in our studies, we think that something has gone wrong. If it is borning, it must be bad. And whenever we think that something has gone wrong, we ipso pronto hustle out children off to a specialist, who discovers that they have LOWS (Looking Out the …
Envying the Dead
“Just so. Mr. Forster was not a Philistine, but he was a stunted man, spiritually, emotionally, and professionally. He was one of those said creatures of the twentieth century who define themselves in terms of their own insufficiencies, and it was his tragedy-and ours, some may think-that he let his unhappiness and his self-reproach lead …
You Protect What You Love
“Moreover, a refusal to discipline teaches students to treat the education being offered with contempt. The students will certainly despise any education that the educators themselves hold in contempt. And if parents and teachers refuse to discipline, they are holding in contempt the education they offer. A man who refuses to defend his wife does …
Aesthetic Berserkers
[A certain literary critic] “was charging through the corridors of beauty with a literary sledgehammer, taking wild swings at anything that smacked of nobility or purpose” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 119.]
Half As Hard
“I was once speaking with a mother who was wanting to excuse her son’s behavior because of certain circumstances which she believed were rigged against him. I did not agree with her, but her assumption led to an interesting question. She believed that her son was living in a world where he would have to …
Preserving the Memory of Art
“Accordingly, while it is not expected of every age that it be capable of producing good art, it is demanded of the literary establishment of every age that it at least keep the memory and the standards of good art always before itself, well polished and clearly labeled. A literary establishment that cannot do this …
Self-Study
“This difference in student ability is one of the reasons why our government school debacle is not a whole lot worse than it already is. Even though most schools do not teach phonics anymore, some students are bright enough to teach themselves phonics — but of course these are the kids who could teach themselves …
Willful Mediocrity
“The dishonor was not the in the confusion, but in the ritualistic character of that confusion; not in the appalling cultural, scientific, and historical ignorance, but in the refusal to mend that ignorance; not in the incompetence, but in the exaltation of that incompetence; not in the mediocrity of execution, but in the meanness of …
Equal Efforts
“Whenever we use the language of praise and blame, in this lumpy and uneven world that praise and blame is invariably distributed in uneven amounts. And for an egalitarian, such unevenness is always ‘unjust,’ or ‘unfair.’ Because it is unfair and because modern educators are driven by a leveling desire, believing that each student has …