Richard Mitchell
Richard Mitchell
Dr. Richard Mitchellwas a professor, first of English and later of classics, at Glassboro State College in Glassboro, New Jersey. He gained fame in the late 1970s as the founder and publisher of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter of opinion and criticism that ran until 1992, and wrote four books expounding his views on the relationships among language, education, and ethics...
ProfessionTrumpet Player
Date of Birth13 March 1930
society events wonder
When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, its always useful to ask, who profits?
school tyrants people
Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude.
language slave masters
If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave.
mind use jargon
His jargon conceals, from him, but not from us, the deep, empty hole in his mind. He uses technological language as a substitute for technique.
educational writing technology
People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought.
wisdom simple order
Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.
dog strong should-have
Training is a good dog, a constant companion and an utterly loyal and devoted friend, and everyone should have one. Education is a nagging counselor. And, I am convinced, everyone does have one. It happens, however, that some nagging counselors have grown strong by a certain kind of nourishment. Others are weak and puny, even infantile, having never been nourished at all.
educational school people
Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.
area avenue drive eagles
If you actually drive up and down 44th Avenue you'll see more eagles nests. This area used to be rural.
children emotional government
The feelings, sentiments, values and responses of our children, or of any citizen, are none of the government's damned business. That we must support a government agency that gives itself to the emotional and ideological manipulation of citizens is infamous.
running heart meditation
A line runs from the meditations of the heart to the words of the mouth. The meditations are not clear to us until the mouth utters its words. If what the mouth utters is unclear or foolish or mendacious, it must be that the meditations are the same. But the line runs both ways. The words of the mouth will become the meditations of the heart, and the habit of loose talk loosens the fastenings of our understanding.