If Parents Wish To Preserve

Reading Is The Scourge Of Childhood Because, In A Sense, It Creates Adulthood.

Childhood Is Analogous To Language Learning. It Has A Biological Basis But Cannot Be Realized Unless A Social Environment Triggers And Nurtures It, That Is, Has Need Of It. If A Culture Is Dominated By A Medium That Requires The Segregation Of The Young In Order That They Learn Unnatural, Specialized, And Complex Skills And Attitudes, Then Childhood, In One Form Or Another, Will Emerge, Articulate And Indispensable.

The Idea Of Taking What People Call The 'entertainment Culture' As A Focus Of Study, Including Historical Perspective, Is Not A Bad Idea.

For In The End, He Was Trying To Tell Us What Afflicted The People In 'brave New World' Was Not That They Were Laughing Instead Of Thinking, But That They Did Not Know What They Were Laughing About And Why They Had Stopped Thinking.

Voting, We Might Even Say, Is The Next To Last Refuge Of The Politically Impotent. The Last Refuge Is, Of Course, Giving Your Opinion To A Pollster, Who Will Get A Version Of It Through A Desiccated Question, And Then Will Submerge It In A Niagara Of Similar Opinions, And Convert Them Into--what Else?--another Piece Of News. Thus We Have Here A Great Loop Of Impotence: The News Elicits From You A Variety Of Opinions About Which You Can Do Nothing Except To Offer Them As More News, About Which You Can Do Nothing.