by Richard Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 14, 1984
A barrage of squibs--64 mini-salvos--that, whatever hits they score on the bastions of bad writing, soon wear down the reader's patience. Mitchell (Glassboro State, N.J.) has become something of an academic folk hero, and media personality, since he began making these ill-tempered, astringently witty assaults in early 1977. To be sure, he's earned some of that attention: the ""educationists,"" whose nebulous thinking and turgid prose he belts, ought not to get away with gobbledygook. So when Mitchell hears about ""administrator perceiver specialists"" or ""the evocation of intrapersonal peaks of performance potential""; when mushy-minded social science types offer courses in ""bachelor living"" and label pubescent hoodlums ""emotionally impaired""; when high school principals reveal total ignorance of grammar, or reading specialists send memos cramming six he/she, him/her, his/hers into one sentence--he lashes out. He has every right to, of course, but the contests are one-sided and monotonous. And Mitchell is on much shakier ground when he abandons English Comp. for politics--when, for example, he damns bilingual education or charges that public schools have too much money. (""They spend it on gimmicks and gadgets and programs and proposals and whole legions of apparatchiks and uneducated busybodies and Ladies Bountiful manquÉes."") His stern appeals for no-nonsense intellectual discipline (curiously undercut by his habit of italicizing so many words that the diction sounds effete) are as naive--or disingenuous--as Reagan's campaign for overnight, cost-free scholastic excellence. Spirited but dubious.
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1984
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: N/A
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1984
Categories: NONFICTION
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.