Little Book of Essays

By Stephen Elder

Newspaper columnist, author, blogger, cabinetmaker, home inspector, and Certified Old Guy Stephen Elder holds forth on a wide range of topics: education in America, worries about English, rants on Congress, why young women talk funny, myth correction, and string theory.

Elder calls ‘em as he sees ‘em. Written under the influence (i.e. of Mark Twain and Dave Barry with an occasional dark detour into Ambrose Bierce), there is plenty of food for thought. Though his dry wit may be an acquired taste, it is also addictive.

One critic has praised Elder’s essays as “full of enlightened observations” about the past, the present, and the future. Another has maligned them as “suppurating with snarkiness, but sometimes justifiably so.” The author recommends that you show initiative. Buy a copy and judge for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365022449

Book preview

Little Book of Essays

Little Book of Essays

Copyright  © 2016 Stephen Elder

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means--whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic--without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this book is illegal and is punishable by law.

Second edition, March 2016.

ISBN:   978-1-365-02244-9

Little Book of Essays

By Stephen Elder

Books by Stephen Elder

Frank

The Shining Man’s Wife

Daughters of the World

The Hardline Inspection Company

Rime and Rhyme

Dr. Elder’s Miracle Grammar Tonic

The Unlikely Assassin

Heart Problems

Ye Gods!

Ye Gods2!

Furies Unleashed

Table of Contents

Language, Writing, and Education

Timing is Everything

More On (Moron) The Dumbest Generation

On the Decline of Education

Education in America

Teachers in America

An Eighth Grade Education Revisited

On the Study of Foreign Languages

Twitter, Twitter

In Defense of the Passive Voice

Teaching Etymology

Where Does English Come From?

The Lightning Word

The Me ‘n Herbie Principle

Lie vs. Lay—Enough Already!

Rejection

Another Heartbreaking Moment in Education

Begging the Question

Etymology—What’s in a Name?

Social Commentary

America Divided

Quack-Talking

The Law of Collective Stupidity

On Behavior Modification

On American Exceptionalism

Personal vs. Societal Rights

Thoughts on D’s, R’s, and Gummint

On Corruption

On Divorce

A Solution to Roe vs. Wade

Traders, Hormones, and Rats

Kudos to Anne-Marie

Sir Charles

The Great Service Dog Scam

American Sharia

On Extremism

Political Commentary

The Color Purple

The Theory of Everything

American Immaturity

Tribalism in America

Earmarks or Earwax

Don’t Cry for Me, Cartagena

Cartagena Revisited

Stale, Pale, and Male

The Election

Obama’s Level Playing Field and the GOP

Disappointing Elephants

Fixing Health Care

Obamacare

Why Immigration Reform Will Fail

Let’s Fix Congress

If Gore Had Won

Too Simple

On Circadian Rhythm, Contraception, and Sex

The Round Earth Heresy

Thoughts on Regulation

The VA: A Crime by the State

A Fool’s Hell

More on Tax Cuts and Job Creation

Miscellaneous Commentary

Frack U

Sex, Aging, and Mantises

In Defense of Curmudgeonry

Rules of the Road

The Big Bang

Shoplifting

419 and History

The Famous Misattributed Commencement Speech

Who’s Winning the Human Race

American Business

On Government

Gals at Gitmo

Super Bowl XLIX

Easter and the Equinox

From My Life

The Big Con

House Rules

The Privy Counsellor

How I Learned about Politics

Learning Vocabulary

On Self Pity

On New York City

My Penn State Grandfather

College Daze

The Day the Earth Turned White

On the Origin of Email

Hobbits and the Sixties

Thoughts on Religion

A Change of Taste

Death in River Forest

Afterword

Language, Writing, and Education

Timing Is Everything

I’ve just finished reading Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation. Among other things, it tells of the depressing drop in book reading over the past twenty years, confirming my long-held suspicion. I just hadn’t realized the extent of the decline. In an exhibition of poor timing, I’m only now getting around to the aspiration I had at twenty: writing. The trek took half a century for various reasons (most of which were due to personal failings, but that’s another story). It’s not the best of times to launch a writing career.

Like many industries, the book biz seems to have organized itself to cater to the so-called youth culture, an oxymoron if there ever was one. Many agents turn the screening of submissions over to junior agents, agents-in-waiting, apprentice agents, assistants, interns, etc. etc. How can the young judge a marketplace in which they have little experience and understanding? YouTube and Facebook are very different from Cold Mountain or Reading Lolita in Tehran (What’s the Civil War? Who’s Lolita? Where is Tehran?). This makes little sense from a business standpoint because more than half the books sold are bought by people invisible and incomprehensible to the Dumbest Generation, namely, the ones between 46 and 64 years old…their parents and grandparents.

Time out for an anecdote (this is supposed to be a true story). A young Hollywood hotshot producer was inter-viewing Rod Steiger for a role in an upcoming film. The producer asks, Can you do a Southern accent? Steiger just stares at him. This is funny. If you don’t know why, well…..

One of Bauerlein’s main points is that, while the Dumbest Generation is the most connected generation ever, with a wealth of information at their fingertips, the information goes largely untapped in the heated tweeting of crucial information (Hi. I’m walking down the street!), or the intense preoccupation with social networking. While they are adept at navigating social networks, they do not use the Internet very well as a research tool, nor are they knowledgeable about evaluating the reliability of websites. The author points out that it is not a lack of intelligence—the current crop is as bright as it ever was—it’s what the kids do with it, or don’t do with it.

Bauerlein speaks eloquently of the growing irrelevance of books to kids reared on screen media. General knowledge of the world, current events, history (both political and cultural), math and science are plummeting to new lows. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in a quote from a 20-something blogger: What smart person would devote hours to learning words that can be accessed at the click of a button. Spell-check can spell. Shift+F7 produces synonyms. What is wrong with relying on something that is perfectly reliable?

The innocence of this worldview is appalling. If you learn the damn word, you don’t have to keep looking it up, and learning it takes no longer than accessing it. Also, Shift+F7 produces no understanding of which synonym might be most appropriate.

Perfectly reliable? This young blogger has obviously never read the famous Spell-check poem:

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lee ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

If you want a chuckle, run the poem through the spell-checker on your own Pea Sea and check out the corrections it makes. If you want a real laugh, give it to your own Generation Nexter and ask the kid to correct it. Lastly, for a sidesplitting guffaw, ask the kid to explain why the mistakes in the poem are mistakes.

Anyone who believes that the education provided by video games and the Internet is as good as or more relevant than old-fashioned book-larnin’, or will prepare the adolescent adequately for adult life, needs to read Bauerlein’s book, even in e-book form (a little irony there). More on The Dumbest Generation later.

Note: Around 90% of the corrections my spell-checker makes are incorrect because the program doesn’t know the word, doesn’t recognize the sentence structure, or doesn’t understand the context. This is not surprising considering the age of the average programmer. Numerous sources put the vocabulary of today’s teen at 10,000 words. Compare this to the teen of the 1950’s, who managed a vocabulary of 25,000 words. Further, the actual present day working vocabulary is only around 1000 to 1500 words.

But it’s not only the teens. I met a 35-year-old professional yesterday who didn’t know what an anvil was.

More On (Moron?) The Dumbest Generation

Colleges and businesses have been complaining about the poor English of their new hires for decades, and it’s getting worse. In contradiction to current thinking, Mark Bauerlein in The Dumbest Generation argues convincingly that introducing computers at almost every level of classroom endeavor does not improve education. One reviewer says Bauerlein’s simple but jarring thesis is that technology and the digital culture it has created are not broadening the horizon of the younger generation; they are narrowing it to a self-absorbed social universe that blocks out virtually everything else. (USA Today).

The Independent says that Bauerlein Demonstrates how the Internet is making young people increasingly ignorant about almost everything else except online video games and the narcissism of self-authored Internet content. In an indictment of the enabling educational system, The Wall Street Journal says: "Adults are so busy imagining the ways that technology can improve classroom learning or improve the public debate that they’ve blinded themselves to the collective dumbing down that is actually taking place." (italics mine)

Bauerlein cites test after test conducted over time by independent public and private agencies, testing services, and university studies. The results show that whatever analytical and/or problem-solving ability gained by playing video games is not being transferred to real life, where a different analytical ability is required to deal with problems confronted in jobs, professions, or relation-ships. Kids who read for pleasure (i.e. not merely what is assigned to them) show a measurably better ability to deal with such problems. But few kids are reading for pleasure any more (especially since J.K. Rowling has finished her Harry Potter series).

In the chapter entitled Online learning and Non-learning, Bauerlein says: While the rhetoric of pro-technology voices soars, however, the reality of adolescent web practices—the nine out of ten postings and game sessions and messages—is just what we should expect, the adolescent expressions and adolescent recreations of adolescents. Bauerlein also says that the genuine significance of the Web to a 17-year old’ is an instrument of non-stop peer contact, not the universe of knowledge brought to their fingertips. To which I would add, what else should we expect of teens who use the Internet mainly to ask, What are you doing?" and to send each other pictures of their genitals?

Guided by the whim of the moment, with neither inkling of nor regard for future consequence, decisions made by the young are all too often doomed to failure, if not actually destructive. Without guidance from adults who have acquired expertise and experience, youth turns to—guess what—other youth. When the young are leading the young absent adult supervision, the scenario depicted in Lord of the Flies will play out every time. 

The 60’s were a turning point in history for many reasons and in many ways. It was when we began to confuse the wants of the young with the needs of the young. They are and always have been two radically different things. In our confusion we have managed to over-empower those who don’t yet have the chops to be empowered. I know. I was one of the enablers.

Every so often an important book appears that lights a beacon. The Dumbest Generation is such a book. Almost every Bauerlein paragraph ends with an eminently quotable observation or conclusion. It is a must-read for anybody with any connection to or interest in education.

On the Decline of Education

Businessmen, politicians, employers, hell, practically everyone has complained about the dumbing-down of the American educational system. Personally, I don’t think the top end of the scale has deteriorated very much, if at all. It’s the vast middle ground that has gone downhill. This trend is especially apparent when you compare the richness of 19th century English to contemporary English.

I’m talking about America. The Brits will have to speak for themselves.

Recently I ran across an 1871 speech given in the US House of Representatives by one Proctor Knott, an obscure Kentucky Congressman. Knott was speaking against a bill to donate federal Land for the construction of a railroad from Houlton, Wisconsin to Superior, Wisconsin. The railroad line was to run past a little Minnesota town named Duluth, which lent its name to the speech. Knott’s speech, a masterpiece of satire, killed the bill.

Your assignment is to read Duluth. Here’s a link:

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/4/1971_4_76.shtml.

Congressman Knott’s speech is oratory at its bombastic zenith. It’s hard to imagine any of our present-day Congressmen capable of such a speech today, and even harder to imagine how many could understand it, even if they were granted the references to the Classics that Knott used so liberally.

English is a magnificent tool, constantly enriched and renewed by contributions from many cultures. There are still people today who can use English with great skill. The main language usage difference between the 19th and the 21st centuries, I believe, is this: unschooled people (the vast majority of the population back then) could handle our language much better than so-called educated people today. Listen to all the talking heads on TV saying between you and I and, um, like, well, you know, you’ll see what I mean.

Sidebar (true story): A high school English class recently marveled at my wife’s ability to read an essay written about one hundred years ago, and to put it into modern terms as she read. One of them asked, Wow! How can you read that and translate it at the same time?

Yeah, the kid actually said, translate.

Finally, to more fully demonstrate how far we’ve fallen, compare Knott’s speech to the fumble-mouthed utterances of Bush, whom this country recently elected to the highest seat in the land not once, but twice! Your papers will be due by end of term.

U cn txt m 2 me.

Famous quotes: I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. Mark Twain

Education in America

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria did a special on education on Sunday, November 6th  (2011). I have the utmost respect for Zakaria and regard him as the most insightful commentator on TV. Amidst the commentary was this shocking statistic: Half of our teachers graduate in the bottom third of their class. If this is true, God help us. What it means is that we are entrusting the education of our young to the dregs of the education system.

The American education system is in trouble. Everyone knows it. All kinds of ideas and remedies are floating around out there. Bill and Melinda are throwing money at the problem like crazy. Sadly, the system is beyond fixing under the prevailing American mindset. Here’s why.

In most other countries, teaching is a respected and honored profession, but not in America. This country does not place a premium on education, and that’s an unassailable fact. We say instead, Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. College education courses are historically famous for being soft. Bright kids are encouraged to go into medicine or law, or even business—any profession where serious money can be made.  The budding Bernie Madoffs have society’s respect, not the local third grade teacher.

After listening to Zakaria’s description of the intense competition in Finland to get into the teaching profession, the description of the rigorous training Finnish teachers receive, and the description of the ongoing training and evaluation they undergo, it is no surprise that Finnish society reveres teachers and pays them well. In contrast, we have little reverence for our teachers, and that is reflected in their paychecks.

America no longer values the future enough to prepare for it. We no longer make tough decisions based on the long-term benefit. We make decisions based solely on short-term cost. It’s why most of our electrical lines are overhead instead of underground. It’s why our companies are run for the sake of investors and not for the long-term health of the company.

Americans do not want to commit the effort, time, and money to a training system that will produce what the Finns turn out. If such a system happens to emerge from the Gates Foundation research, fine, but it’s not going to come from the entrenched Department of Education or the teacher’s unions that are primarily concerned with preserving the status quo.

We have not concentrated on training teachers with a deep fundamental understanding of their subject. Our current predilection for political correctness and low expectations (higher expectations might damage tender psyches) does not equip students with either the prescience to understand the value of knowledge or the desire to acquire it.

Zakaria’s program revealed that the Finns and the South Koreans turn out good students with vastly different systems. What the systems have in common is good teachers. The show also mentioned the fact that Finland and South Korea have the advantage of relatively homogeneous societies. America does not. Only 4% of Finnish students live in poverty. A full 20% of American students do. This fact alone brings a host of societal problems to American schools, not the least of which is an almost universal discipline problem. Many of our high schools are glorified detention centers that warehouse children until Mom and Dad drag home from 12-hour shifts, or from other activities, too tired or detached to check on Junior who