There exists in every age, in every society, a small, still choir of reason emanating from a few scattered thinkers ignored by the mainstream. Their collective voices, when duly discovered a century or so too late, reveal what was wrong with that society and age, and how it could have been corrected if only people had listened and acted accordingly. Richard Mitchell’s is such a voice. It could help make a better life for you or, if it is too late for that, at least for your children. Ignore it at your and their peril. John Simon
Richard Mitchell died at his home on December 27, 2002. We will continue to make The Underground Grammarian freely available to honor his memory.
Rowan University held a memorial service for Richard Mitchell, at 7 pm on Wednesday, February 19 at the small concert hall in the Wilson Music Building.
Here’s the program and some testimonials.
A cleansing fire leaps from the writings of Richard Mitchell.
George F. Will
THE COMPLETE UNDERGROUND GRAMMARIAN NEWSLETTERS
(Transcriptions)
Volume 1 (1977)
Volume 2 (1978)
Volume 3 (1979)
Volume 4 (1980)
Volume 5 (1981)
Volume 6 (1982)
Volume 7 (1983)
Volume 8 (1984)
Volume 9 (1985)
Volume 10 (1986)
Volume 11 (1987)
Volume 12 (1988)
Volume 13 (1989)
Volume 14 (1990)
Volume 15 (1991)
What to Do till the Undertaker Comes
Print edition of “The Gift of Fire.” Order a copy now!
Read testimonials and Chapter names and descriptions.
SPECIAL ARTICLES
Labor, Leisure, and Liberal Education
by Mortimer J. Adler
“Liberal education is education for leisure; it is general in character; it is for an intrinsic and not an extrinsic end; and, as compared with vocational training, which is the education of slaves and workers, liberal education is the education of free men.”
Why Johnny Can’t Think: The Politics of Bad Schooling
by Walter Karp
“When 58 percent of the thirteen-year-olds tested by the National Assessment for Educational Progress think it is against the law to start a third party in America, we are dealing not with a sad educational failure but with a remarkably subtle success.”
Textbook America: The Teaching of History
by Walter Karp
“As Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton, sternly advised the Federation of High School Teachers: “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” Since there was no way to stop “the masses” from entering high school, the only way to meet the crisis, in short, was to prevent them from learning anything liberating when they got there.”
A little note from Richard Mitchell: Permission to Copy and Plagiarize
Freedom of the Press and License, too
“WE are often asked permission to reprint or duplicate or in some other way to circulate the pieces that appear in The Underground Grammarian. It always seems to us a good idea, and we always grant such permission. In fact, you may take this little notice as prior written permission to do likewise in any fashion that seems good to you. We neither ask nor expect any form of payment, but we would like to be cited as the source. But if admitting that you read this sheet will get you into hot water, we will be the first to understand.
“One reader wrote recently to apologize for plagiarism, since he had woven some of our stuff into a speech he had given and made no attribution. Since then we have also had word of a man who wrote, to the editor of some newspaper, a letter that was, in fact, made entirely of our words. The paper caught him, chastised him, and barred, him from their letters column forever. Somehow, we feel that something only sort of like justice has been served here. So now we have to add a new rule. Plagiarism is also permitted. Go ahead. Make our day.”
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