This is a hobby of mine since I still have kids in school. We have tended to deconstruct (pardon the jargon ;) ) textbooks to show how to say the same things in simple English to the children for some time.

As a skill, it's come in very handy when interpreting government writing for clients as well. Government documents are written in a dialect related to, but not derived from, postmodernist jargon.

One can still lie using old-fashioned one- and two-syllable words, but it's much clearer that way.

I didn't mean to imply that you held modern art and music in low regard, but one would have to be especially dense not to notice that you greatly admire Beethoven. I picked something I was reasonably sure of. Your contrast of modernism to postmodernism is apt, especially considering that postmodernist commentary tends to do that too, with itself as the superior, "more developed" point of view, of course.

Someday postmodernism's value as the Guardian of Chaos will be recognized, I predict, not as a major voice, but as a breathing space to allow humanist philosophy to regroup in the face of a new onslaught of priestly homogeniety. (I have been wrong before...)