RECKONIN'
  • Features
    • Clyde Wilson CLASSICS
    • Book Bench
    • Charlottesville
    • COVID Commentary
    • Dixie These Days
    • Links
    • Magnolia Muse
    • Matters of Faith
    • Movie Room
    • Rekindling the Flame
    • Southern History
    • Writing Contest 2022
  • Contributors
    • Full List
    • Carolina Contrarian
    • Enoch Cade
    • Dissident Mama
    • Ted Ehmann
    • Walt Garlington
    • Caryl Johnston
    • Gene Kizer, Jr.
    • Perrin Lovett
    • Tom Riley
    • Joseph R. Stromberg
    • H.V. Traywick, Jr.
    • Clyde Wilson
    • Paul Yarbrough
  • Contact
  • Features
    • Clyde Wilson CLASSICS
    • Book Bench
    • Charlottesville
    • COVID Commentary
    • Dixie These Days
    • Links
    • Magnolia Muse
    • Matters of Faith
    • Movie Room
    • Rekindling the Flame
    • Southern History
    • Writing Contest 2022
  • Contributors
    • Full List
    • Carolina Contrarian
    • Enoch Cade
    • Dissident Mama
    • Ted Ehmann
    • Walt Garlington
    • Caryl Johnston
    • Gene Kizer, Jr.
    • Perrin Lovett
    • Tom Riley
    • Joseph R. Stromberg
    • H.V. Traywick, Jr.
    • Clyde Wilson
    • Paul Yarbrough
  • Contact

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

A Southern James Bond Goes to School

5/28/2023

1 Comment

 
Picture
Southern fiction has a new  hero—Tom Ironsides makes his  appearance in book form in Perrin Lovett’s work The Substitute (Shotwell Publishing, 2023). Sequels and prequels are in the offing.

Ironsides is a sort of James Bond, but a much better man.  He is a master of his former craft as a CIA operative, although he has progressively developed a realisation that he had not really been defending his country but rather the worst people in it.  Lovett describes his paramilitary adventures vividly and more realistically than Bond fantasies.

Ironsides has seen much of the world and has lived a good deal abroad, including as a college professor in Slovakia. Like Bond, he drinks and likes women (and additionally is a cigar connoisseur ). He is also a Christian, a genuine  classical scholar, and feels deeply a duty toward his declining country and people. Ironsides was born and bred in the snows of New Hampshire, but is a happily adopted South Carolinian.

In his first book appearance Ironsides’s social conscience leads him in retirement to sign up as a substitute teacher for South Carolina schools in the Augusta, Georgia metropolitan area. He wants to know what is happening in education.

From here The Substitute  is based on the  first-hand experiences, blow by blow, of the author as a Substitute.  These experiences are a cold shower (or an alarm bell if you prefer) for anyone who really wants to know what goes on in the public schools.  And we all should want to know.

Ironsides’s encounters in elementary, middle, and high schools with dozens of administrators, teachers, and students–good, bad, and indifferent–are authentic. There are a number of good books about the perilous state of American education, but Lovett provides us with a nuts and bolts, every day portrayal that really strikes home.

There are some good and dedicated teachers–almost all demoralised and wanting to get out even if it means working for Walmart.  The students are mostly good (although there is a violent minority who are never appropriately handled). But the young people are, as they vaguely understand, the victims of fearful, faddish, over-controlling bureaucrats who have never had any idea about what education should be.

The schools barely teach reading, writing and ‘rithmetic to some of the students.  As for passing on Western Civilisation, which has been the successful goal of education for centuries, the intellectual and moral mediocrities who are in charge do not even know what you are talking about.

​Ironsides entered the schools in an open-minded investigative attitude and in hope of contributing some improvement. He ends his year with the certainty that there is no hope of reform in the vast decaying educational empire.  The preservers of civilisation  must leave behind  the mass public “education” and begin innovative work elsewhere.

1 Comment
Perrin Lovett
5/29/2023 09:52:02 am

That's one heck of a review! Accurate and encouraging. I'd encourage all to buy at least 10 copies of the book.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews

    Dr. Wilson is also is co-publisher of Shotwell Publishing, a source  for unreconstructed Southern books. 

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018

Proudly powered by Weebly