The Learning Tower of Babel [Paperback]

Richard Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2000

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 Þrst 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 279 pages
• Publisher: Akadine Press (October 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585790036
• ISBN-13: 978-1585790036
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,414,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Here's why I no longer blindly follow or respect 'authority', May 8, 2001

By 

Gerald Ladmirault (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Learning Tower of Babel (Paperback)

I remember perusing shelves at the University of New Orleans' library and finding a book with this intriguing title. I leafed through it idly until I came upon an essay with the title, "To be to Some chewed Books Tasted Are Swallowed to Digested, and Others be, and Some be Few." In it he was describing a workbook exercise in which children were to un-garble garbled sentences. Mitchell pointed out, "Even the dullest students should be able, as instructed, to 'rewrite each group of words to make a clear and sensible sentence.' But *why*, dammit? *Why*?" I laughed out loud-- this was the first time my objections about undemanding schoolwork had ever been vindicated, and by a professor at that! He then went on to point out the inherent (and multiple levels of) absurdity of several examples of time-wasting foolishness in virtually every single essay in the book. I was, and am, hooked. URLs are forbidden from reviews, but website names aren't. If you've enjoyed any of Professor Mitchell's work, got to the Sourcetext website and you will be pleasantly surprised.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty and brilliant., January 3, 2001

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Learning Tower of Babel (Paperback)

In this collection of scathing essays from _The Underground Grammarian_, Richard Mitchell took on the educational establishment and tore it to bits.

Though his ostensible target was the slipshod use of language, he did not limit himself to the niceties of grammar; far from it. He shredded the popular theories of "education" that threatened (and still threaten) to turn children's minds to mush; he defended children's literature that didn't talk down to kids, didn't emasculate their stories into plotless little sessions of feelgood warmfuzziness, and didn't treat young readers as subjects for indoctrination into the latest forms of political mumbo-jumbo; and in e.g. his attacks on "bilingual" education, he decimated "political correctness" before it was called that.

This collection includes what I think is the absolute cream of Mitchell's _UG_ essays, among them some that deserve to become classics. For example, his profound love of intellectual liberty, and his corresponding loathing for any obfuscation that threatened it, make his "Politics and the Eglinsh [sic] Language" a worthy successor to Orwell's famous essay.

For my money, this is Mitchell's best book. I bought and read it when it was new -- and now that a reprint is available, I'm about to buy and read it again.