Losing the Language

Old Man Alert! Old Man Alert!

It's time for another installment of "The Old Man Shakes His Fist at the Kids".

A few weeks ago we had a hotly contested school board election in our town and the natural discussion accompanying it was the sorry state of public education. Teachers are frustrated, parents are as well and are taking their kids out of the public schools in favor of private education or home schooling, and taxpayers are frustrated because it seems we are not getting a good return on our investment of hard earned tax dollars. So when I tell you my tale you will either nod in agreement or tell me to get with the times.

Once upon a time, back when I roamed the Earth WITH the dinosaurs, we were taught, handwriting, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and diagramming sentences. I remember having spelling tests that I would drill on for two or three days and always did real well on it. No, I would never win the National Spelling Bee against those automatons of today, but I took pride in putting together a coherent thought or two. When I would write a paper I would actually read it through several times before turning it in. You will catch me in a grammatical error occasionally but I do try to avoid them.

Apparently somewhere along the line they quit teaching those things in school. Adults roam the Earth now who can't spell, can't put together a sentence, and generally are illiterate. An easy scapegoat would be the short hand of texting but I think it goes much deeper than that. I think it goes back to how we first learned to read and write. Very few people under 40 write in cursive handwriting. I doubt it was emphasized like it was when I was in school. We are all doing everything on the computer. It's just not the same as developing that hand to eye coordination necessary to form letters, words and sentences. The result is a whole generation or two of people that write in abbreviations, truncated words and symbols. It is appalling to me to see some of what passes as written communications today!

The question we have to consider is whether there is a cost for this loss of literacy or is it something we need to accept and move on? I contend that if we continue along this path in a couple of more generations literacy will be the exception rather than the rule. Even writing as marginal as mine will be considered an oddity. The language is already bastardized with tech-speak so for many that is a foreign language. So I think it would be a tragedy to lose it without putting up a fight.

What do we do? First, practice writing to maintain your skills. Work to improve them if they have slipped. And don't be sloppy, even on line! Second, don't count on the schools to teach your children or grandchildren. With standardized testing the only writing skills they seem to be teaching is how to completely fill in the circle with the correct answer. Introduce them to reading first and writing as soon as they are able. Teach them to communicate in writing as effectively, or more, than with the spoken word. And teach them to spell, for God's sake!

I will now return to my porch..........