Forum Moderators: not2easy
She is a candidate for class valedictorian and hopes to double-major in marine biology and political science in collegeBut the 17-year-old said she has written only one research paper during her high school career. It was three pages long, examining the habits of beluga whales.
Students simply aren't being asked to write. I don't think that the problem is a new one though. Find someone in their thirties and ask them what a "predicate" is. Or ask them how to conjugate a verb or diagram a sentence.
From a 10th grade test:
Define preposition - What a hooker says to get a date.
Strangely, the government hasn't funded a study showing the correlation between students that can't read and students that can't write. If most Americans read at or below the 8th grade level how can they be expected to write on a level that approaches 8th grade?
Out of the billions of websites that are online how many of them do you think have clear and compelling content? What is the easiest way to set your site apart from the rest of those poorly written sites?
Full Story [boston.com]
Have you noticed that there is no longer an emphasis on reading? Have you noticed that the average reading level keeps dropping?
School employees aren't the ones who vote down school funding bond measures and tax increases to allow districts to afford good wages and high staff:student ratios, or even to maintain current levels of funding once inflation is factored in.
The school system doesn't decide to allow kids to get after school jobs to pay for games, toys and cars, instead of teaching them that school/learning/literacy is important by making them stay home and study.
The underlying reasons behind the deterioration of the public school system rest squarely on the heads of parents and other voting citizens. If parents and society as a whole aren't going to prioritize education enough to fund it and support it, how can we expect schools to do an exemplary job of educating students?
While a motivated teacher with motivated students can do an excellent job with very little money, in the real world teachers often have overcrowded rooms full of students who's parents are not "backing up" the teacher's efforts, combined with sub-standard teaching materials and facilities, which only makes their job that much harder.
The motivated students get shortchanged because the teacher must spend his/her time fighting the odds with the un-motivated ones to ensure they meet "standards" when testing time comes around.
Then the rest of us have to put up with the little idiots after the school system hands them their diploma and disgorges them onto the streets. Everybody loses. ;)
Anyway, from the flip side, I'd also argue that writing problems are noticeable on the web because the barriers to entry are so low-- anyone can get an e-mail address and an Angelfire account. On the other hand, publication in a refereed academic journal, or as a newspaper editorialist, or even in a language-incinerating advertisement campaign, was long in the hands of a select population, most of whom benefitted from superior education. Wasn't the romantic view that with the Internet, at last, the "people" could be heard without being filtered through the elites?
Well, I suppose we're living Homer Simpson's observation: "The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek" [2F10] [snpp.com] :)
Are we dipping towards the boundaries of the forum charter? Debate over education, or any kind of public policy, is not the sort of thing ever conducted in any remotely enlightening manner in any kind of web forum.
You are quite right. :) Consider me duly chastised. I'll settle down now.
Now, if newspapers could manage to put out a morning and evening edition along with breaking-news "extras" editions, back in the day when you had to hand set the stories on a lead-type press, and STILL find time for proper copy editing... well, there's just no excuse in the digital age. Unless you're a one-man shop writing and proofing all your own material, get someone to check your work!
Can you define what you mean by a language error? Where does the line between old school “stickler for the rules” and modern writing stop.
Okay, but what about the *impression* you give other people of yourself and your product? Who would want to spend money buying stuff from someone who can't even get their spelling or grammar right?
My own standard is this - if the writing distracts the reader's attention to the mechanics of writing itself, rather than letting attention rest in the meaning of the sentence, then the writing is no good.
Sometimes strict adherence to a "rule" creates that kind of distraction - therefore, no matter what the rule says, that's not good writing to me. Similarly, the unintentional use of poor grammar can also distract the reader from the communication itself. Then that's also bad writing.
