Conscientious Objections: Stirring up Trouble about Language, Technology, and Education

In a series of feisty and ultimately hopeful essays, one of America's sharpest social critics casts a shrewd eye over contemporary culture to reveal the worst — and the best — of our habits of discourse, tendencies in education, and obsessions with technological novelty. Readers will find themselves rethinking many of their bedrock assumptions: Should education transmit culture or defend us against it? Is technological innovation progress or a peculiarly American addiction? When everyone watches the same television programs — and television producers don't discriminate between the audiences for Sesame Street and Dynasty — is childhood anything more than a sentimental concept? Writing in the traditions of Orwell and H.L. Mencken, Neil Postman sends shock waves of wit and critical intelligence through the cultural wasteland.

Library Journal

In a delightful series of pungent essays (some originating as talks), Postman takes on a variety of contemporary cultural phenomena including television (and its deleterious effects), language, the crisis in education, politics, and social ``science,'' to list a few. The concluding piece, ``My Graduation Speech'' (offered freely for use), is alone worth the price of the book, but Postman's keen observations and thoughful concerns are equally apparent throughout. Readers of his earlier works ( Teaching as a Subversive Activity , Amusing Ourselves to Death , and The Disappearance of Childhood ) will also applaud this. Highly recommended to academics and the general public. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred