Writing Down the Jones

In short, there is scarcely an area of name giving in which the British don’t show a kind of wayward genius. Take street names. Just in the City of London, an area of one square mile, you can find Pope’s Head Alley, Mincing Lane, Garlick Hill, Crutched Friars, Threadneedle Street, Bleeding heart yard, Seething Lane. In the same compact area you can find churches named St. Giles Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre Without Newgate, All Hallows Barking, and the practically unbeatable St. Andrews-by-the-Wardrobe. But these are just their everyday names. Oftentimes the full, official titles are even more breathtaking, as with The Lord Mayor’s Parish Church of St. Stephen Walbrook and St. Swithin Londonstone, St Benet Sheerhogg and St. Mary Bothall with St. Laurence Pountney, which is, for all that, just one church.

Mindlessness is the most pertinent and accurate criticism of American education. There has been a great deal of activity in the field of educational innovation and experimentation, but most of it has not been adequately evaluated…Charles Silberman noted that education “has suffered too long from too many answers and too few questions.”