Includes bibliographical references and index. Schooling no mystery : teacher in 1980 America : what he found -- The alphabet equals the wheel : the centrality of reading -- Middlemarch is--? : reason to de-test the schools -- Textbook into scrapbook : television and the child- but not what you think -- Ideas versus notions : Where the educational nonsense comes from -- Subjects dead or alive : history is past and present life -- Math and science are liberal arts : the urge to be pre-posterous -- The art of making teachers : occupational disease : verbal inflation -- The word : written, printed, spoken : give her a book? she has a book -- Western civ. or Western sieve? : of what use the classics today? -- Why go to college? : the university as the beloved republic -- Scholarship at gunpoint : "doing research" - should the sport be regulated? -- Campus martius = field of the god of war : back to the middle ages -- The lost leader : an American commencement -- The 57 elites : the educated mind.