it used to bother me a lot that schools weren't doing a better job of turning out literate adults, since i believe that to be the best defense a democratic society has against demagoguery, but after seeing the rise of a host of pipsqueak prescriptivists, who base their repetitious punditry not upon any deep acquaintance with the literary tradition, but upon a small set of gotchas they use to express their inordinate contempt for the masses, i have to say: our language is not served by such self-appointed guardians; & even though one of my two jobs is helping students (often ESOL) master mid-twentieth century formal English (--which i say: most of our books are written in), i also know that there existed a form of English before that, & another before that, which were equally good tools of communication for their speakers. so will there be another, when these (high-acid) books are dust.
but like every other public debate, this gets reduced to a comicbook battle between antagonists, each with their half-truth.
