KEEPING THE POOR POOR. I maintain that the Habits of Effective People matter. Not everyone agrees.

[Priya] Parmar’s controversial course at Brooklyn College, “Language Literacy in Secondary Education,” typifies the professor’s preference for politicized pedagogy. Required of all students who intend to become secondary-school teachers, the course trains students to draft lesson plans that teach literacy. Parmar’s syllabus informs students that the principal focus of these lesson plans must be “social justice.”

Another theme animating Parmar’s course is her aversion to the proper usage of English. To insist on grammatical English, Parmar believes, is to exhibit an intolerable form of cultural chauvinism—a point reinforced by a preface to the requirements for her course, which adduces the following quotation from the South African writer, Jamul Ndebele: “The need to maintain control over English by its native speakers has given birth to a policy of manipulative open-mindedness in which it is held that English belongs to all who use it provided that it is used correctly. This is the art of giving away the bride while insisting that she still belongs to you.”

Let's take Mr Ndebele's thesis seriously. "The need to maintain control over piloting by experienced pilots has given birth to a policy of manipulative open-mindedness in which it is held that piloting belongs to all who fly provided that it is used correctly. This is the art of giving away the bride while insisting that she still belongs to you."

No, this is the art of saving your life. Or, to return to the use of proper written and spoken forms, saving your earning capacity.