Education Research: This Is A Process Whereby

Everything In Our Background Has Prepared Us To Know And Resist A Prison When The Gates Begin To Close Around Us . . . But What If There Are No Cries Of Anguish To Be Heard? Who Is Prepared To Take Arms Against A Sea Of Amusements? To Whom Do We Complain, And When, And In What Tone Of Voice, When Serious Discourse Dissolves Into Giggles? What Is The Antidote To A Culture's Being Drained By Laughter?

We Had Learned How To Invent Things, And The Question Of Why We Invent Things Receded In Importance. The Idea That If Something Could Be Done It Should Be Done Was Born In The Nineteenth Century. And Along With It, There Developed A Profound Belief In All The Principles Through Which Invention Succeeds: Objectivity, Efficiency, Expertise, Standardization, Measurement, And Progress. It Also Came To Be Believed That The Engine Of Technological Progress Worked Most Efficiently When People Are Conceived Of Not As Children Of God Or Even As Citizens But As Consumers-that Is To Say, As Markets.

We Are More Naive Than Those Of The Middle Ages, And More Frightened, For We Can Be Made To Believe Almost Anything.

Make No Mistake About It: The Labeling Of Someone's Language As 'sexist' Involves A Political Judgment And Implies The Desirability Of A Particular Sociological Doctrine. One May Be In Favor Of That Doctrine (as I Believe I Am) But It Is Quite Another Matter To Force Writers By Edicts And Censorship Into Accepting It.

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