Nowadays is a complex temporal adverb that means much the same thing as Positive anymore.
That is, Nowadays, S asserts that S is true at the present time,
and also presupposes that there was a time in the past when S was false.
- Nowadays, everybody carries a phone.
- Everybody carries a phone nowadays.
- *%Any more, everybody carries a phone. *
- *%Everybody carries a phone any more. *
(The '%' in front of the sentence means it's dialectal -- see the link for details)
This is the opposite of normal any more -- which is a Negative Polarity Item
and therefore can appear only in a negative clause.
Normally, Not S any more asserts that S is false in the present,
and presupposes that S was true in the past.
- Nobody wears a fedora any more.
- Nobody wears a fedora nowadays.
But the reason why the second sentence is preferable to the first has nothing to do with nowadays.
Start is an active inchoative predicate, and therefore its use in the present tense
is interpreted in a Generic sense. With a punctual predicate like start,
that would mean a repetitive sense, as in
- The motor starts to sputter every time I press the accelerator.
That is, the "present tense" starts to get is not used to refer to the present time;
the progressive is starting to is used instead.
My old school grammar explains: A to-infinitive after a noun/pronoun has the function of a relative clause. Examples:
1 When I was in London I bought a map to show me the way ( meaning which could show me the way).
2 Where can I get a bus to take me to the Tower (which can take me to the tower).
3 I hope there will be a guide to show us round (who can show us round).
4 I wish we had someone to act as interpreter (who could act ...).
In colloquial language prepositions are placed after the infinitive:
5 In London children have large parks to play in.
In written language preposition + relative pronoun is preferred:
6 The City Council provides baskets in which to put litter.
You can say these to-infinitives have the function of a relative clause or you
can say they correspond to a what-for indication.
It is a bit awkard to show how English may have come to this structure. Maybe from French un livre à lire ( a book to read) and ultimately from Latin constructions.
It seems to me that Latin ad + gerund or noun + gerundive were rendered with à + infinitive in French and with to-infinitive in English.
If one tried to explain the English to-infinitive just by filling in other words one
would have to use such an awkward formula as
a map which is able to show me the way. - Not exactly a natural way of expression.
Best Answer
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000) gives three definitions for didactic:
None of these definitions explicitly includes the note of teaching with an ulterior motive that you mention in a comment above, but the third definition, with its emphasis on teaching or moralizing excessively may hint at something similar.
A number of verbs can be used to indicate teaching to serve an ulterior motive. A usage note at implant in Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) offers a close comparison of several verbs that are candidates for the meaning that you may have in mind:
The definition closest to what you describe seems to be the one for inseminate, although that word seems so closely connected to procreation in most people's minds that it may not work for you. My own preference is for inculcate, which emphasizes the persistence of the effort—and which does not imply anything about the intentions (and motives) of the inculcator, for good or for ill.
However, I think that the verb that may most accurately describe the process of teaching a belief for ulterior purposes is indoctrinate. Here is the Eleventh Collegiate's definition of that word:
The second definition here is the one that I think fits best in your example sentence, though it requires as light adjustment of the final part of the sentence: