Comments on: Updated: Reduced To Grunts By Grown-Ups

By: R J Stove

R J Stove — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:59:11 +0000

Paul Gottfried and I, recently, were commiserating with one another about the sort of review which is all too frequent on the Amazon.com site. Some of the Amazon reviews of my little Student's Guide to Music History are priceless. The following extracts are quotes: "The term 'student's' is used too broadly in the title. For high schoolers and even college students it proves to be a difficult read." "The way it is written, though, makes me feel like I'm being bludgeoned by big words. I'll open to a random page and pick a random excerpt to show you what I mean - p. 44 'Suspected of revolutionary and freethinking sentiments, Schubert nevertheless stayed, at least formally, within the Catholic Church in which he had been nurtured.' The author could have easily reduced his writing style to more simple terms, making them easier to understand and available to a wider audience. He chose to make this text extremely wordy and that just bothers me enough to give it a poor review." My 12-year-old nephew has no perceptible difficulty in understanding my printed prose, which has given trouble to these (presumably college-educated) Amazon geniuses. This nephew would also, I imagine, avoid such grammatical solecisms as "makes me feel like [sic]I've been ..."

By: JP Strauss

JP Strauss — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:36:49 +0000

Bob, aren’t the teenage years hailed as the crescendo of one’s existence by Hollywood et al?

I am very glad and very fortunate that I finished high school in 2000. I was fortunate to be instructed in Afrikaans, which was largely unaffected by the global “dumbing down” that the Romantic languages are going through. According to the then functioning SA education ministry, First language Afrikaans is a harder subject than Physics, Chemistry and Math, while English was given a lower rating. It’s also telling that the subject I scored the highest marks in was in fact English First Language. But I don’t have any major qualms about how things were done back then, but now we are also being swept away by the current of institutionalized stupidity.

It’s horrendously ridiculous that a University would even OFFER a course in grammar or reading skills that I was taught in grade 7. As far as I can tell, University is where you learn to apply your skills, not where you get audited.

By: Bob Harrison

Bob Harrison — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:30:48 +0000

I doubt this comes as a surprise but middle and high school curriculum have dropped grammar as a requirement. I took an “advanced writing” course my senior year in high school as an elective where I learned what used to be called basic grammar. This was in 2002.
Ilana has written about “the adulation of the child” before. Is that ideology responsible for our education system? Do we simply believe that teenagers are already endowed with “uncorrupted wisdom” and are loathe to “corrupt” them with rigidity?

By: Robert Glisson

Robert Glisson — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:28:56 +0000

When I entered college, I had to take a “Dumbbell Math” class. The first thing our instructor taught was- “A proper math question will read and answer as if it were a proper sentence.” He taught math by that method and within a week, students could solve “pop math questions,even algebra level questions” verbally, while standing at their desks without needing a pen and paper. Learning to write is essential to all disciplines.

By: M. B. Moon

M. B. Moon — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:15:25 +0000

Well, “literally” may be too strong. I suppose he spelled single letter words correctly. I was in shock so I can’t be sure.

By: M. B. Moon

M. B. Moon — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:11:41 +0000

My awakening to how awful government schooling is came around 1995 when I read an essay by my boss’s 8 year old son. Both parents were highly educated, intelligent and affluent. Literally every word in the essay was misspelled. I was very embarrassed and did not know what to say.

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:35:32 +0000

Dose – not does. Dats watt happins wen I tipe qwickly n don’ use spel-Czech!

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:34:22 +0000

I was fortunate to be required to waste only one semester of my life on an “English Composition” college requirement which had NOTHING to do with composition since (like most “English” teachers) the teachers only wanted to talk about their favorite books. Grammar – fuggedaboutit!

The real bad stuff is what goes into technical journals – where difficult science and engineering combines with domestic illiteracy and foreign language ignorance. Add a healthy DOSE of “Power Point” to complete the technical/literary lobotomization process!

By: Vic Jones

Vic Jones — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:49:10 +0000

After obtaining a master’s degree in literature, I taught for a number of years at the community college level. I was roped into teaching what the institution called “developmental writing.” The DW courses were instituted to prepare students who were not ready for English Composition for college credit. There were 3 levels of DW. Students were assessed and placed at a level and had to pass through 1 to 3 levels before enrolling in college-level composition. While teaching level 3 one semester, the lowest DW level, I found myself pounding my head against the wall to help students understand the concept of a thesis sentence and supporting material. At level 3, the goal for these students was merely to write an intelligible paragraph, not a lengthy paper. So one day I decided to have them read aloud the short paragraphs we were using as examples from a text, so that they could get the gist of a thesis sentence. They could not read through the short paragraphs, written most likely at a 5th or 6th grade reading level, in a coherent way. It hit me then. They can’t write because they can’t read. Who sold these students down the pipe when they all had 12 years in public schools to learn to read and write? I told my supervisor I would never teach DW again.

By: Steve Hogan

Steve Hogan — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:48:46 +0000

People are illiterate because the government is running and/or funding our educational system. Everything the state touches turns to crap. Why would schools be any different? Next up: what's left of our health care system. It's bad enough that the government schools churn out idiots. With government run health care, people will literally be dying. A word to the wise: Don't get sick. And homeschool your kids while you're at it.