Were it not for Noah Webster Jr.,the farm boy from West Hartford,Conn., who would have been 250 onThursday, Americans might all bereading their newspapers from back

to front today. As the War for Independence was winding down,

the linguistic future of the United States was up forgrabs. After all, the English of King George III had sud-denly become the tongue of the oppressor. And roughlyone-quarter of the new nation’s 3 million citizens werenot native English speakers. Some Americans sought toreplace English with German, then spoken by nearly10% of the population, and others advocated more radi-cal options, including right-to-left reading in Hebrew.

In 1783, Webster, then a recent Yale graduate ekingout a living as a schoolteacher, put an immediate end tothe charged debate. His rhetorical tool was a tiny text-book, just 61⁄4 inches long and 31⁄2 inches wide, whichmade the case for an American brandof English.

In his so-called blue-backedspeller, Webster issued a linguisticdeclaration of independence: “Thiscountry must, in some future time, beas distinguished by the superiority ofher literary improvements as she is al-ready by the liberality of her civil andecclesiastical constitutions.” His book was the first pub-lished in the new United States, and Webster traveled tostate capitals across the country to lobby for the na-tion’s first copyright laws. He also invented the modernbook tour and publicized his work with blurbs from emi-nent authorities (many of which he wrote himself).

By the end of the 19th century, nearly 100 millioncopies of Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book would besold. In contrast to most European countries, where re-gional dialects hold considerable sway, the UnitedStates has never been divided by language. Even on theeve of the Civil War, leading secessionist Jefferson Davisacknowledged that “we have a unity of language whichno other people possess, and we owe this unity above allto Noah Webster’s Yankee spelling book.”

Yet the speller marked just the beginning of Web-ster’s six-decade literary career. His treatise, “Sketchesof American Policy,” published in 1785, formulated sev-eral of the key principles that later worked their wayinto the Constitution, such as the need for “a supremepower at the head of the union.” At the ConstitutionalConvention in Philadelphia, Webster emerged asGeorge Washington’s personal policy wonk, at whosehotel room door the general would come knocking. In1793, Webster became editor of New York City’s firstdaily newspaper, the American Minerva, the Federalist

Party organ that helped Washington keep the UnitedStates out of another war with Britain.

While Webster would dabble in other fields, includ-ing epidemiology, statistics and philosophy, his crown-ing achievement would be his dictionary, to which hedevoted the second half of his life. In 1806, he publishedhis Compendious Dictionary of the American Lan-guage, a spelling dictionary in which he first made manyof the changes for which he has become famous, such asaxing the “u” in “colour” and the “k” in “musick.”

It was 22 more years before he unveiled An Ameri-can Dictionary of the English Language — though hetook time during breaks from composing definitions tofound Amherst College and serve as a representative inthe Massachusetts General Court. This was his mag-num opus, containing about 70,000 words, nearly twiceas many as in Samuel Johnson’s 1755 masterpiece. (Oneword, “demoralize,” was of Webster’s own coinage.)

While Johnson had the soul of a poet, Webster hada scientific sensibility. He officiallyintroduced into the English languageall the new concepts of the Enlight-enment. What’s more, he brought re-markable analytic power to lexicog-raphy. As James Murray, the first ed-itor of the Oxford English Dictionary,would later write, Webster “was aborn definer of words.” Unlike the

speller, the dictionary didn’t bring in much money dur-ing his lifetime, but it immediately received praise fromaround the world. By the early 1830s, even Britishcourts were citing Webster’s as the dictionary of record.

Webster’s flaming red hair and remarkably erectbearing made him a striking figure. He wore long-tailedcoats and frilled shirts long after they went out of style.Though devoted to his seven children, Webster waslargely a loner and spent most of his days in his study. OfWebster’s major character flaw, most of his contempo-raries concurred that it was “unbounded vanity.” Web-ster was always talking himself up. When the famousphysician Benjamin Rush once greeted him with thesalutation, “I congratulate you on your arrival in Phila-delphia,” Webster is reported to have shot back, “Youmay, if you please, sir, congratulate Philadelphia uponthe occasion!”

But Webster’s quirky personality was well suited tohis chosen vocation, lexicography. Without his legend-ary grandiosity, he never would have taken it upon him-self to unite Americans with his words.

Joshua Kendall is the author of “The Man WhoMade Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation ofRoget’s Thesaurus.” He is working on a biography ofNoah Webster.

The definition ofYankee know-how

Randall Enos For The Times

By Joshua Kendall

Americans owetheir unity oflanguage to Noah Webster.

OPINION WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2008 A19LOS ANGELES TIMES

Eight thousand years ago,the Tongva and Tataviampeoples, who made theirhomes in what we now callthe Los Angeles Basin and

the San Fernando and San Gabrielvalleys, did exactly what many of ushave been doing for the last few days:They inhaled the bone-dry air of awind-scoured fall afternoon andwatched the hillsides above themburn.

The smoky conflagrations theywitnessed — more than 5 millenniumsbefore the first European sailed up theCalifornia coast — were, even then, anannual ritual of nature so ancient andreliable that it had set its evolutionarystamp on the chaparral itself, givingrise to species of plants whose seedsrequire the heat of wildfires to germi-nate.

Then, as now, the sequence ofevents was the same. Santa Ana windsblowing off the high desert to the seasuck the moisture from the late sea-son grasses, brush and light forest up-slope and turn them into tinder. Aspark occurs. The first such fires wereno doubt caused by lightning, thoughthere’s evidence to show that the earlyAmerindians here, as in other parts ofNorth America, often set fires them-selves — just as we now do, sometimesby accident, too often by design.

High winds spread the embersand, depending on the ground coverand gusts, burn until they reach a lim-it set by nature — or, nowadays, byman through the mechanism of mod-ern fire suppression.

What the Uto-Aztecan-speakingTongva and Tataviam never had toput up with is the torrent of self-righ-teous abuse that now follows eachfall’s wildfire season as inevitably asrain and mudslides.

The bigger the fire and the great-er the losses, the higher the wave ofrhetorical censure. Our annual strug-gle with wildfires inevitably looses aflood of essays on the essential hubrisof unnatural Los Angeles, a city thatinsists on sprawling beyond its natu-rally appointed limits and on buildingwhere it ought never to build — on hill-sides, in canyons, on flood plains andat the seashore.

Arrogant defiance of nature, theargument goes, inevitably brings di-saster — and well-deserved disaster atthat. (It’s interesting to recall that ourworst single fire preceded urbaniza-tion. During the last week of Septem-ber, the Great Fire of 1889 burnedmore than 300,000 acres in northernSan Diego County and southern Or-ange County, killing thousands ofsheep and destroying the unharvestedbarley crop.)

Putting aside for the mo-ment the simple historicalfact that our natural disas-ters — earthquakes, floodsand droughts, as well as fires

— predate development, there is an-other way to look at this. Alone amongthe world’s great cities, Los Angelesdoes not exist at the confluence ofgreat rivers, on the shore of a fine nat-ural harbor or astride some importanttraditional trade route. It never wasthe historical seat of some great pow-er.

It exists because it has a magnifi-cent climate and a fascinatingly beau-tiful natural setting, and because abunch of ruthless, steely-eyed guyswith their avarice on overdrive real-ized that they could get rich sellinggood weather and open space, if theywilled a city into being.

They succeeded beyond eventheir counting-house fantasies; theresult was Los Angeles, which isunique among the world’s great citiesin that — until the construction ofDisney Hall and the Cathedral ofOur Lady of the Angels — it lackeda single inarguably distinguished pub-lic building but possessed the world’sfinest store of fine domestic architec-ture.

The city that the newcomersmade of the developers’ ambitions ispreeminently a city of private livesrather than public spaces. It also isone in which people live more inti-mately intertwined with nature thanany other urban population, thoughthat intimacy exposes them to every-thing from wildfires to the odd hungrymountain lion.

Our sprawling suburbs — the de-spair of generation after generation ofenlightened planners — also happento provide the best lower-, middle- andworking-class housing of any metrop-olis in the world. A detached housewith a bit of garden to enjoy remainsan unattainable dream for most of theglobe’s population.

Dealing with the fires, floods andquakes that are part of this environ-ment — albeit on a scale unimaginedin most other cities — is part of theprice we pay for reaping the very con-siderable day-to-day benefits, spiritu-al as well as economic, from this ar-rangement.

And if our sprawling suburbs lookto many of us these days like simplyway too much of a good thing, it’sworth recalling that the phrase onlyoccurs to those who’ve already gottheirs.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

T I M R U T T E N

Fire, the pricewe pay

Los Angeles philanthropistEli Broad has probably nevermet Soledad Moya, aneighth-grader at MiddleSchool 302 in the South

Bronx. But both are big believers in anapproach that has people wringingtheir hands and wagging their fingers:paying students to perform on stand-ardized tests. Moya’s school is a 45-minute subway ride from the Manhat-tan hotel where Broad took the stageat last month’s Clinton Global Initia-tive to announce a $6-million grant tohelp launch EdLabs — an initiative atHarvard University to advance inno-vations in public schools.

EdLab’s first order of business isto determine if Spark — the pilot fi-nancial incentive program at Moya’sschool and 58 others in New York City— leads to concrete improvements inacademic achievement. Seventh-graders can earn up to $50 a test — for10 assessment tests throughout theyear. There’s a similar program forfourth-graders. The money goes into abank account that only the studentcan access. The better you do, themore money you earn, up to $500 ayear for seventh-graders. The idea isto make school tangible for disadvan-taged kids — short-term rewards thatare in their long-term best interest.

Is it working? That depends onwhom you ask.

Pundits and some in the mediasay Spark is bribing kids; they shouldlove learning for learning’s sake. But ifyou talk with those actually partici-pating in the pilot program — the stu-dents, administrators and teachers —you hear something different.

Moya said she wasn’t a “studyingkind of” person before the awards.Now she and her friends like to look inthe dictionary and memorize wordsand their definitions, and they asktheir teachers for more practice tests.Even though she’s not eligible for theawards now that she’s in eighth grade,she’s still studying harder before tests,she said. “Once you get started withsomething, you keep doing it.”

The changes she saw in studentslike Moya caused Lisa Cullen — a liter-acy and social studies teacher at theschool — to go from skeptic to sup-porter: “I saw how it takes away theuphill battle you have trying to get stu-dents to study for tests.” She saw adefinite increase in students’ excite-ment, enthusiasm and effort.

That’s no small feat when test-taking ranks low on the priority list ofstudents whose lives are crammedwith adult responsibilities, Cullensaid. “The ideal would be for every kidto love learning, but that’s impossiblein today’s world.” One of Cullen’s stu-dents is 10 minutes late every day be-cause she takes two subway trains anda bus to get her little brother to school.She then has to watch him afterschool until her mom gets back fromher third job. “She and all my studentsare so stressed all the time.”

Principal Angel Rodriguez be-lieves the Spark incentives will get thebiggest results with the most chal-lenging students — whom he calls “thebottom third.” Rodriguez said virtu-ally all of his students struggle withpoverty, and many live in one of the 18nearby homeless shelters. “I can’t tellyou how many times I’ve had parentsin my office that are high on heroin orcrack, or reek of alcohol,” he said.

Despite these challenges, testscores rose substantially last year forseventh-graders at the school. Rodri-guez thinks the Spark incentives werea big factor. The percentage of sev-enth-graders meeting the state stand-ards for English-language arts rose 12points over the previous year’s scores.For math standards, the gain was 15percentage points.

Rodriguez has no patience for thecritics. “Thank God my father didn’tlisten to them,” said Rodriguez, whogrew up a few blocks from the school.“He had to use what he had to moti-vate me.” He would tell Rodriguez hecould get a new pair of Conversesneakers if he got a 90 on an upcomingtest, Rodriguez said. “Guess what Igot on that test?”

Parents at the school feel thesame way. “Not one parent com-plained,” Rodriguez said. “One hun-dred percent said, ‘Sign me up.’ ”

Spark’s creators have been field-ing calls from all over the country, butsurprisingly not from California.That’s too bad. California has one ofthe country’s widest achievementgaps. That’s because, according to anew report from UC Berkeley, unlikein most states, the majority of Califor-nia’s public students are from lower-achieving groups — Latinos, AfricanAmericans and English-languagelearners — or the “bottom third,”whom Rodriguez thinks Spark willhelp the most.

EdLab’s evaluation of Spark willcome out in 2009. California educatorsshould look beyond the rhetoric andexamine this approach. We can’t af-ford to dismiss it outright. As Rodri-guez said, “What price do you place ona seventh-grader whose lack of moti-vation is leading to failure?”

Anne Stuhldreher is a fellow atthe New America Foundation.

Theyearnas theylearn By Anne Stuhldreher

Excuse me, but when didthe words “Muslim” and“Arab” become acceptableepithets?

I’m not a Muslim, andperhaps I was slow to see this com-ing. Four months ago, I blithely ad-vised a group at a local mosque notto obsess over the anti-Muslimundertones of the presidential cam-paign. At that point, Barack Obamawas defending his Christian bonafides against “accusations” of “beinga Muslim” (as if it had suddenly be-come a Class-D felony), but was do-ing so without condemning the im-plicit slurs against Islam, Muslimsand Arabs.

In a “don’t worry, be happy”tone, I breezily noted that althoughthe stoking of racial fear and xeno-phobia was a cherished tradition ofAmerican politics, I really didn’tthink that this time around the can-didates would permit the wholesaleslander of Islam or Muslims.

Apparently, I was wrong. Theundertones have become screamingovertones. And it is past time to ob-ject.

If it wasn’t clear before, it be-came crystal clear last week in the

aftermath of Republican rallies. Fo-menting fear to shore up droopingsupport, Republicans sadly usedheated demagoguery about “pallingaround with terrorists,” about “Ba-rack Hussein Obama” and abouthow Obama doesn’t “see Americalike you and I,” words that mixedsubliminally to conflate “terror”with “Muslim” and to whip crowdsinto xenophobic anger. After his en-raged supporters were recorded ut-tering death threats and racialslurs, McCain was forced on severaloccasions to try to tamp down theanger in the audience and to defendhis opponent.

That was a good step one — un-til McCain blew it. A woman stoodup in the audience and said that shejust couldn’t trust Obama because,as she put it, “he’s an Arab.” McCainshook his head, took the micro-phone and said: “No, ma’am. He’s adecent family man, citizen, that Ijust happen to have disagreementswith on fundamental issues.”

So, what is he saying? Arabsaren’t decent family men? Theycan’t be citizens?

The fact is, neither McCain norObama — who continues to combatabsurd attacks on his Americanness— has been willing to speak outagainst the implicit slurs against

Arabs and Islam. Is it really too difficult for Oba-

ma to respond: “For the hundredthtime, I am a Christian, and if you aresuggesting that there is somethingwrong with Islam or being a Muslim,you are wrong”?

Would it be so hard for McCainto say: “There is no room in my cam-paign or in America for religious orethnic intolerance — that’s whatwe’re fighting against”?

Maybe I missed the denuncia-tions amid all the hoopla over field-dressing moose, but it looks like thenext ice age will arrive before theNAACP, the National Conference ofChristians and Jews or the Anti-Defamation League loudly objectsto the implicit defamation of Mus-lims and Arabs that has seeped intothis presidential campaign.

Women rightly protested gen-der bias during Hillary Clinton’srun, but we failed to strongly chal-lenge the earlier bias against Mor-mons during Mitt Romney’s bid,and we are currently failing to refutethe anti-Muslim bias embedded inthe assaults on Obama.

It is a failure we need to correctnow.

Constance L. Rice is a civilrights attorney in Los Angeles.

‘Muslim’ shouldn’t be a slurBy Constance L. Rice

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