In "Occupational Disease: Verbal Inflation," Barzun succeeds in demonstrating that "verbal inflation" is endemic to education. His "verbal inflation" is characteristic of "educationalese," the trendy language of education, which threatens to mock otherwise well-intentioned attempts at educational reformation.
In the above article, Barzun writes, "For the last fifty years, American Education has pursued a policy of overstatement about its role and substance; it has lived by continual exaggeration of what it is and what it can do. The medium naturally is words, words misunderstood and misapplied--it is verbal inflation" (104). Barzun's "verbal inflation" is comparable to Orwell's "pretentious diction" or "meaningless words," words which dress up simple statements with arrogant pomposity and political intent.
In his "Occupational Disease: Verbal Inflation," Barzun puts examples of such pomposity into "educationalese" phraseology: "visual [or musical] literacy," "social studies enrichment," "engender general creativeness," build ethnic identity," achieve affective education" (106), and so on. His point is not that such concepts lack a certain degree of validity, but rather that their users bombastically purport to achieve much more than they can ever accomplish. For example, the arts are a necessary part of school curriculum, but it is doubtful that American schoolchildren can ever "create African art of their own" after "[focusing] on the arts of Africa for two weeks" (106).
The above example refers to a well-intentioned effort on the part of a school to initiate students into another culture's art, but Barzun considers such an attempt as a "modest little event" (106), and not a cultural breakthrough. He wants to avoid the overbloated verbiage found in such claims that African art for two weeks is a "catalyst for general creativity," or an "exciting introduction of a new dimension in the school" (107). His claim is vali...