Conscientious objections: stirring up trouble about language, technology, and education (1st ed.)

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.From the Trade Paperback edition.