AN EDITOR SPEAKS OUT
67IS A LITERATE CITIZENRY GONE FOREVER?
IS ANYBODY THERE? DOES ANYBODY CARE?
♦♦♦♦
"Congradulations!" reads a banner in a large discount store touting a local team. "We have moved those products to Isle 2A," broadcasts a sign in a stationery shop. (Alongside Gilligan's Isle? I ask myself.) In my grocery store, I am urged to buy "avacados," "cantalopes," and "tomatos." Shades of Dan Quayle's 'potatoe' gaffe.
Educated persons using what used to be fairly commonplace words find they can no longer communicate with others. Recently a friend asked for the "gourmet" section of the grocery and was directed to Budget Gourmet frozen dinners, the only item within the clerk's ken that contained that word.
"Have you rode the Ferris wheel?" inquires a lead anchor on the local news. On the radio a newsman tells us of something happening in 'Doddy' County, Florida. It takes a moment to realize he is pronouncing the letters D-a-d-e as if they rhyme with body. A politician in front of a large crowd pronounces the "ch" in chasm not as in 'cat' but as in 'chat.'
King Ungrammatical, Queen Malaprop and Prince Mispronounce rule.
We have, in the span of 50 years, developed a repugnance for the scholarly traditions that so many of our grandparents and great-grandparents championed and cherished.
♦♦♦♦
When I wrote the above in a longer piece for the local newspaper a dozen years ago, I was amazed to find myself, barely a week later, castigated most strenuously by a local university professor. She called me a snob and went on at length about why it was perfectly natural to spell many words incorrectly (an example she offered: the 't' in congratulations sounds like a 'd'). She also strongly implied that I was a bigot for believing that the children of immigrants should or even could be taught to learn proper English.
I found the woman's arguments mindboggling and rebutted her contentions with this follow-up letter:
♦♦♦♦
[The author] ascribes to me a number of arguments not found in my original piece. Far worse, she then attempts to justify the use and teaching of bad English.
Of all the absurd premises in [her] diatribe, perhaps the most preposterous is that Florida is a long way from California and therefore misspellings and mispronunciations are acceptable.
Beijing, Istanbul and Johannesburg are also a long way from California. How close must something be before we are held accountable for spelling or pronouncing it correctly?
Setting aside the outlandish, I am truly alarmed by the leap in reasoning that those who champion standard English are intolerant of people different from themselves. In attacking us, [the author] defames the memory of my grandmother and millions like her. Sophie Israelson Brookman arrived here at age 12, a refugee from the pogroms in Latvia, speaking only Yiddish. Three years later, she taught English to new immigrants in New York City night schools. While retaining her birth language, she adamantly insisted that her children and grandchildren learn and employ formal English usage. For [the author] to suggest that poor children should be measured by a lesser gauge or that we who share the joy and value of a common language are pernicious bigots is both ludicrous and reprehensible.
[The author] is not single-handedly responsible for the state of affairs in which we find ourselves. Unfortunately, she has had plenty of help from her friends.
♦♦♦♦
I was gladdened by several Letters to the Editor that took my side. One writer said that my nemesis acted as "an apologist for the educationally challenged, for whom several remedial classes have to be maintained at the university level." He offered this as well: "Until we accept the reality that we have turned our students into automatons, parents into cheerleaders, and teachers into government employees whose success is determined by how far they can remove themselves from the classroom, the education of our children will always be inadequate."
BORED CHILDREN - TIME AND TREASURE LOST
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CULTURAL LITERACY
Skewed thinking such as the above pervades many schools and universities and is
extended to encompass the belief that reading good literature is also wasteful.
In the 1970s, my brother was allowed to read only science
fiction novels in high school to get credit for his sophomore English requirement. In the 1990s, one of my graduate professors said my writing would be so much better if I would sprinkle it with obscenities. When I pointed out that the person I was currently writing about never spoke that way, I succeeded only in arousing the woman's ire and ending any hope for teacher's pet status.
Not much has changed. Recently, in a library, a high school student who was a stranger to me complained that his teachers were idiots. He said he spent most of his time in chat rooms (in the classroom? I wondered) because school was a waste. I said, "Great way to turn your brain to mush."
"I get all A's and B's," he replied, rather hurt.
"From teachers whom you've just described as idiots? What do you think those grades are worth?" I could see that made him think. Then I gestured toward the shelves all around us. "Son, do you realize that this library is filled with books by the greatest geniuses who have ever lived? Let them be your teachers."
He shrugged and said, "I don't read that much."
"Well, let me ask you this. Do you know the difference between an illiterate person and someone who doesn't read?'
"No," he admitted.
"Neither do I."
PERVASIVE ENNUI
I've met lawyers who tell me they haven't read a book in years. Librarians have said the same, explaining that they are too consumed by the technology of their jobs to read. I've been in many homes where not a single book is in evidence. For years, I've been choosy with whom I share book talk because either I'm not understood or am branded a prig. (Someone actually called me 'uppity' once for mentioning that I read the New York Review of Books.)
I talked with a professor from France who was spending her sabbatical at our university. She said she'd been horrified that no one seemed to read or talk about books or current events. "I've been here six months," she told me, "and haven't heard one intelligent conversation." I told her I'd been working on campus for ten years - and I hadn't heard one either! (Hyperbole, yes - but not by much.)
New teachers almost seem to take a perverse pleasure in being ill-read. One young woman told me that she didn't need to read because she was only planning to teach third grade when she graduated. Another, who had already been teaching for several years, visited us while we were in London for a summer. She seemed not to have heard of any of the great English figures whose names come up again and again in traveling around London; even Dickens rang no bells. She did buy a picture of Margaret Thatcher to take home because "Mom's a real fan of the queen."
Would you call me pedantic? I'm sure many would. But if we had not let our schools become prison-like hold-alls that bore
the very life out of millions of kids - and, yes, their teachers, too,
I would be one more decently educated person enjoying
talks about books with people from every walk of life. I
wouldn't be an oddball. I wouldn't even stand out.
Cultural
literacy used to be taught to everyone. We learned the same things in
schools across this land. Reading wasn't simply an exercise: It was the
best possible way to pass on our heritage. What is handed down by graduates of our schools to their progeny today is bad
grammar, a loathing of reading, and an overall unresponsiveness to anything educational - making the entire mess of a school system
self-supporting.
How or when we'll fix our education system (as much in need of a grand overhaul as health care in this country), I cannot say. I only know that soon isn't soon enough.
WHAT'S HOLDING UP THE FOUNDATION OF OUR COUNTRY?
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Comments
How did you get here so fast, FP?!
Yes, I'm certain you can find this sort of thing everywhere but I've always felt our schools were deteriorating more rapidly than in many other countries. Perhaps I'm wrong.
How horrifying to think someone could be proud of not reading. Yes, I've met them, too. I like to believe theirs is more a defensive measure because they feel inferior to the educated people around them. In any case, how in the world did she become the editor of a city magazine? The mind boggles!
I know that the standard of English language teaching has fallen abysmally here too. It's so difficult to find kids today who can string a straight sentence or two. Perhaps life is just too full of other more transient distractions? As for the boss...the mind boggles indeed!
I totally agree with you. While a case can be made for evolution of the English language, there is simply no excuse for broken English.
And do you know that google is now accepted as a verb? Google it if you don't believe me. ;)
Shall we start a movement? Our slogan can be from that great original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still: I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it.
Wishing you weren't both in such distant time zones 'cause I'd love to discuss this more tonight but I'd have to use glue to keep my eyelids open!
To bed then Meg...bad English isn't going to go away! We can continue this another day. :)
Meg, reading this makes me see red and puts me in the most hateful mood, I swear! How can illiteracy be justified, by an editor or a professor, no less! ARGHH!
Eliot and Pound defined and shaped the tradition for us as set in motion by Socrates, Aristotle and Plato... Derrida told us what was wrong with it. Everyone gave up after that. Relativism and 9,000,000 "legitimate" new forms of literary "criticism" evolved and everything that lead to 40-60,000 years of human literacy and cumulative wisdom vanished in the blink of a "hey, our skin color doesn't match, and those guys over there were assholes." You can toss in a "Oh, and he doesn't have a vagina, so ignore him," too. That way we're all ignoring everyone for all the right reasons. It's awesome.
Meh.
I could respond to this hub in a reply about 60 pages longer than the hub itself. <3 how you think. /cheers.
Good nite, Meg. The world will still be waiting for you tomorrow. :)
Hmmm...I wonder if nite is considered bad spelling.
Well done and I concur. My mother's side of the family came from dirt poor, Mississippi common folk, and I never heard her or my grandparents every speak in anything less than perfect, grammatical english. In my house, no mispronunciation or grammatical error was allowed to pass uncorrected, gently but firmly. Thanks for a great, thoughtful - if frustrating - read!
That first professor has stunned my sensibilities. As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!"
great hub mindfield - .....and as for not reading - how appalling - it is no doubt one of the biggest gifts one can be given or indeed ensure that one's own children enjoy.... and as a former boss/supervisor I was constantly amazed by the number of people who(through the ineptitude of the current school system) could neither spell properly, write clearly, correctly contextualise words or indeed even write a report... our language is going to the dogs! ...thanks for bringing this to the forefront...
My story is similar. A few years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper bemoaning the errors in signs and ads. I received several letters of support, which gave me some encouragement, but the situation gets worse every year.
In the days when signs and labels in the grocery store were still handwritten, my dad used to carry around a marker and personally corrected all those words like potatos and tomatos. I was so proud of him.
In my profession (medical transcription), I am often called over by another MT to listen to and decipher a doctor's dictation, when in the end, the words/phrases in question are not really medical words at all; they are usually just regular English words the MT has never heard of (for example, "curmudgeon"). I'm not smarter than the other MTs; I've just read more widely and my vocabulary reflects that.
My daughter, daughter-in-law, and son-in-law are all teachers, and I am proud to say they teach proper English usage every day. My two grandchildren (6 and 3) already own over 400 books and counting. The older I get, the more I believe that reading is the key. My daughter's main joy in teaching getting more kids passionate about reading. Her oldest daughter (the one who just turned 6 and is finishing up kindergarten) is reading on a 7th-grade level already.
Meg, your presentation is excellent food for thought (and simultaneously makes me feel less of an outsider in our culture). Thanks!
So, so true. I taught undergraduate English for a total of twenty-five years, and saw not just English skills slip in that time, but general knowledge, verbal reasoning, and simple logic. It broke my heart. The worst part, though, was the perasive "I paid for this course, I should automatically pass it" mentality, and the utter disrespect for learning.
The chasm between those kids who read for pleasure and those who didn't got wider. I sometimes found myself trying to teach two separate levels at once, in order to challenge the literate kids and provide remedial aid for the rest.
Now I'm trying to open a Writing Center to tutor kids, but the lack of funding and amount of paperwork is making me think twice -- it's as if the community either doesn't understand what the kids need, or doesn't care.
Thanks for this great hub (and the opportunity to vent).
Hmmm...Mindfield...I think the beacon still hasn't gone out. Looks like a lot of people on Hubpages at least are concerned about the decline of the English language and the reading habit. I wonder if we all are over 40? ;)
One thing which really gets my goat is the popularity of the sms language today and students insisting that teachers should accept it in classrooms...since as long as their message gets across, that is all that matters. :P
Or maybe I am mad, because I am still anachronistic and believe in spelling the old-fashioned way.
Hey Mindfield,
That why talk radio is popular, because people lack basis knowledge and are grossly misinformed. These people get their information from people who themselves are misinformed. If this trend continues, Lord help us all.
While I fully understand that language is a fluid thing, changable by time, location, and circumstance, we do still have linguistic rules that we must follow, unless we fancy taking ourselves back to a pre-Shakespearean time, linguistically speaking. Dialects are one thing. They're seen in almost all languages, if not all of them. But misspellings due to ignorance and/or laziness are another matter entirely. For a person to insist that "congradulations" be upheld as just as proper a word as "congratulations" is appalling and smacks of ignorance. Not only does in encourage laziness, it also serves to remove a word's linguistic roots, doing a disservice to the fact that the word evolved from something that actually makes sense.
People who brag about how little they read astound me. Myself, I can't be happy unless they're a book around. I read a lot. Not usually the great classics, I'll grant you, since some of them I find dry as toast and rather dull, but I read plenty of other books, and I pay due attention to quality. I was so known for reading in high school that it once surprised my English teacher to see me reading a book with less than 300 pages, since that was "thin" compared to what she'd normally see me reading.I may not even read as much as I used to, but to my credit, I still do love to pick up a good book, and I can't fathom how people think it's a bragging point to not have picked up a book since high school.
That children of foreign descent should be graded by a lower standard than others is a disgusting notion, one that'sblatantly insulting to those children. They can be given assistance to bring their language comprehension levels to what is considered acceptable, some allowance can be made when they make errors, but to judge them by a lower standard because they didn't originally speak English implies that they aren't smart enough to. The person who wrote that letter to you is more of a bigot than you are, I'd figure.
I have no problem being called a snob because I believe in doing justice to the language I speak. I don't believe that laziness and ignorance should be excused. The English language has its rules, like any other language, and I believe in following them to be the best of my ability. If that makes me a snob, then so be it.
But at least I'll be a snob who can express themselves decently in a conversation. :p
Hear, hear! :)
Love what you wrote. I struggle and always have struggled writing proper English with correct grammar. But instead of excusing it I try to improve it. That's one reason why I recently started hubbing.
I lived in the Bay Area in the '90s and remember the Oakland School Board pushed to recognize Ebonics in 1996. I detested that idea. It was an insult to anyone speaking and writing as well as those trying to learn to speak and write proper English.
Yes, Travis. I remember that whole Ebonics debacle. Unbelievable. What it says is that we believe certain children are incapable of learning because of their background or race and, of course, nothing could be more demeaning or thoroughly wrong-headed.
Thank you for what you said, for working to improve your English (believe me, I'm doing the same all the time!), and for realizing that writing (and reading) are the best ways to do that. If you ever have a question I might be able to answer about grammar or other related areas, please don't hesitate to ask (www.brookmanediting.com).
Ria M. - You're right! We should be proud to be snobs if it indicates that we won't lower our standards just to fit in. I'll take that to heart! Thank you, too, for your other very cogent comments.
Must agree, MindField - I occasionally grade ESL papers, and the standard of English used by the average Greek is far better than that of many native speakers. I also find that they tend to be much better educated - Greeks still love to read.
Mind you, reality TV has taken hold here, too. It might be downhill froim here.
Prince 1244: Couldn't agree with you more. Having an uneducated/undereducated populace that can't or doesn't read is already leading to chaos. When we realize that a mind empty of higher thoughts and concepts is easily led by any demagogue who comes along, it should shake us to our core and spur us into taking immediate action.
Hi, Sufi: I really do believe we are behind the eight ball here more than in many other countries. But as our 'culture' - or what passes for culture today - invades the entire world via electronic media, I feel a foreboding. I'll have to try to hold to DianaCharles' optimistic view that the beacon has yet to go out!
How I wish it didn't remind me of that banner at the end of the movie "On the Beach": THERE IS STILL TIME, BROTHER! (As you remember, there wasn't.)
I know that when my children went to school , which was quite a while ago now, the walls in the classroom were full of their work with lots of spelling mistakes,
I was brought up in a school where spelling mistakes were not tolerated, so I questioned the teachers...... They told me the last thing children want to see on their work is red ink correcting spelling mistakes......
It is much worse now, my mum worked as a doctors receptionist, and could not get anyone to join the work force who could spell. I have stopped getting upset about it long ago, as it will not get back to the standard it once was, ever.... this is probably littered with errors now, need to brush up on my grammar..... is that how you spell it?
You spelled it perfectly, Brenda!
Now let me go cry in a corner over teachers who are 'protecting' children from red marks on papers. Are we sure it isn't that it saves a teacher a lot of time (and brain work) to embrace such a stance?
As to the problem in offices where hardly anyone can spell or alphabetize or organize or think clearly or write a simple business letter - is it any wonder that so few things work well in this country any more? There IS a direct correlation!
Elena: I know just how you feel. I don't understand it any more than you do but I know it goes on all the time. My former husband and some colleagues were sent to another university for classes on how not to be 'language police.' Let students be creative, they were instructed. Never point out their mistakes.
We don't have to look far to see where that terrific advice got us, do we?
Shadesbreath: I've always wondered when the schism (pronounced siz-um and I don't care what anyone else thinks!) came that tore us asunder from our roots. I wish you would write those 60 pages - I'd learn a lot from them, I know.
Little Bro: Please do not write 'nite,' 'kleen,' 'ginormous' or any of those other awful advertising and slang corruptions. At least don't write them to me. You don't want to give me more pain than I've already got, do you, my boy? ;-)
Christoph(er): People of every stripe once prided themselves on learning to speak properly - and taught their children to do the same. Some of those dearly departed must be weeping tears of despair in the heavenly hereafter to see what a hash we've made of things.
Your comment also reminded me of a young woman from Romania who came to the States to learn English. In Romania, she said, newcomers attempting to learn the language would be corrected by every man, woman and child so that they might learn quickly and speak more fluently. But here in America, no one ever showed the slightest interest in helping her learn English. She was never corrected and therefore lost a huge opportunity to become fluent. It made her, she said, very lonely, sad, and angry.
Ajcor: I keep wondering when I'm going to come back in fashion since there are so few people who can do the things you mention! Thanks so much for your comments and compliments.
Carol: It is one of the miracles of the Internet that we suddenly find people like ourselves - people we had begun to feel did not exist this side of our dreams or long-ago memories.
I'm with you and your daughter on reading - it is, without any doubt, the key. Good parents always make sure to fill their children's lives with books of all descriptions, whether bought or on loan from the library.
Your medical transcription problems are all too familiar to me. This happens in the closed captioning world, too, which I learned about after my mother’s hearing became problematic. One gruesome example: The word 'gymkhana' is rendered as 'June Carter' several times on one of my DVDs. Not very useful to the hearing impaired, would you say?
Teresa: You and I have been through the wars, haven't we? And trying to battle the bureaucrats so that children get the help they need from people with bona fide skills becomes just another war. There was a time when women with a good education could set up as Dames of their own village schools (usually in their homes). There were no hoops to jump through - you either were good at what you did and people paid you or you weren't and you lost your place to someone who was. Now you are judged by a petty minion of the state who can't spell, can't read, can't think - but knows that all 64 forms have to be filled out in triplicate and filed with fees before you’ll be allowed to make the world a better place.
DianaCharles: Your comments reminded me of an experience I had in graduate school. One of my peers came up to me and said, "The professor condescended me."
"You can't say that," I responded, channeling my inner school-marm.
"So what? You know what I mean."
"Yes, and I know what 'You Tarzan, Me Jane' means, too, but I don't think we want to go back to grunting and pointing just because we both understand it."
I spoke with an old friend about a year ago after 20 years apart. He said I sounded like "a snob with a stick up my butt" because of how I spoke. I was insulted and flattered at the same time.
I taught my children proper sentence structure and word usage from the time they could speak. I would continuously correct their speech and their written essays. I would even correct those on television who spoke inappropriately and my husband (who actually studied words and their origins) is sickened by how even those who are supposed to teach by example on television do so incorrectly.
I do NOT rely on the school systems to teach my children all they need to know as they are not capable.
I will tell you this, I grew up in a house that had no books. I dropped out of High School at 16. I have loved to read all my life. I would read anything I could get my hands on. I always tell people I am "self educated". In my early 20's while working as an executive secretary for a bank my A.V.P. asked me what college I had graduated from. I informed her that I had not gone to college, or for that matter, even attended High School. "My God Annie" she said shocked "I would have sworn you were college educated". I always loved that woman. But THAT is what reading does for us. Even without our knowing it.
very impressed Moonchild60 with your determination and self education..cheers
nice article!I like it! ;)
I mite be a whorable speller, but I reed lots of books. Plees donut be so upity. Now if I kood just find my pictrure book.
Fantastic hub, I love it!
Moonchild60, tell them you're a graduate of Autodidact U next time they ask where you went to college! I think you're fantastic for educating yourself - and even more so for understanding that "home-schooling" as an adjunct to government schooling is obligatory.
Thanks, Gin and LondonGirl. I very much appreciate your compliments!
PaperMoon: You get my laugh-of-the-day award for "whorable." Not only is it the best misspelling I've ever seen but you may have created an entirely new word!
I can't imagine a world without books, let alone not being able to read them. A year or so before one daughter was to begin kindergarten, the local school board decided phonics were "unnecessary" and would no longer be taught.
This was long before the internet, but somehow I found a set of phonics flash cards from which that daughter mastered this basic reading tool. Because I'd made a game of it, when the next daughter was 3 years old, Big Sister used the flash cards to teach Little Sister phonics too. Both are prolific readers to this day.
Excellent piece! Thank you so much for writing this. I could go on forever supporting what you've written here with my appall over the years. I myself was made in Greece, born in America, the daughter of two immigrants who barely spoke the language. I, myself, spoke Greek and finally Grenglish (pardon my own word here) through Kindergarten. Yes I did get odd looks and never knew why. But I did my best and surpassed most with highest honors throughout the years. I never understood the laziness of others, because to me, that's what it is, plain and simple. There should be no sympathies when it comes to learning the language of the country you are living in. So glad you wrote this.
If I laid all the books in my house edge to edge and end to end, I'd run out of house long before I ran out of books! The only room that doesn't have atleast 2 bookshelves is the furnace room and that's just for safety - open flame, paper, they just don't mix well to me.
I've always read at least one book a day. I always have one with me, just in case I have to wait somewhere on someone. I can't do without my books. If you take my books away, you'd better start running because I'll be out for blood.
I've corrected books that were in print, going so far as to send one tat was filled with spelling inaccuracies back to the company requesting my money back.
My grammar is soomewhat Pensylvania Dutch-ish, but I can spell like nobody's business! I can give you the definitions for synonyms after I spell them, too! The one that gets me the most is in romance novels - throws versus throes - I always get this mental picture of the heroine being tossed across the room, moaning in ecstasy, climaxing and getting knocked senseless at the same moment. ROFLMAO!
As for Phonics, I gave both of my sisters a set of Hooked on Phonics for their first baby showers. I'm proud to say those kids can read and write as well as anyone of my generation.
Wonderful hub, and a right proper rant too. Extremely well done!
Oh dear, I must agree. I taught ELL students and I found ways to bridge the gap between what they sounded out and what was the correct spelling. I was teaching 2nd grade and I could sound out what they were doing but I still taught correct spelling. It is amazing that students and teachers much older are not even trying.
I recall when we first started moving towards computers instead of typewriters. I had several friends who were very excited to correct their problems in spelling because now spell check would be available. One had some learning disabilities that made it difficult to spell but she was not arguing for everyone to spell like her, she wanted to spell correctly and was just happy to have another tool. Now an entire generation of writers and students who have access to spell check are spelling even worse than before. Hmmm
Anne (who has been called a snob many times as well)
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I have a very large library and read quite a bit every day but this seems to be a tradition of the past to many younger people, busy texting in shorthand.
It can be a problem, as you say, communicating, because they lack the vocabulary to articulate what they want to say.
I am afraid the teacher's union, the breakup of the family, the out-of-wedlock birth rate, the loss of local control over schools, and the self-esteem movement in teaching—not to mention the influence of Dewey—have done major damage to our children. If our citizens are dumbed down and can't understand; how can they participate intelligently in civil society?
Thank you for addressing this serious problem with courage and intelligence.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one seeing. I think that the texting trend is really hurting us. Our young people don't know how to use proepr English.
This is a wonderful hub. I totally agree with everything you said. Proper spelling and grammar IS important.
Meg...this is a wonderful hub. Larkin, our youngest son who is now in college wrote an amazing piece on hubpages. When he was 8 years old, he used words commonly that I had to look up. He loves history and politics. Most children watched cartoons, Larkin watched CNN. Just thought I would send a little literary treat to you and a smile of course. :)
I adored reading as a child - huddled under the blankets so as not to be caught LOL...seriously though, I think the addition of video game systems as entertainment in our society has been the major contributor to the lack of reading and writing skills in kids today. I feel so old LOL!
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I believe the problem lies in our schools. How else can we explain graduates who cannot write a simple declarative sentence or spell? My 16 year-old granddaughter informs me that spelling isn't important so long as you're understood. Whenever I'm in receipt of correspondence from her (a rare occasion) I find it difficult do interpret. How sad.
Feline Prophet says:
7 months ago
Meg, it's a universal problem I think. I had a boss who proudly claimed never to have read a book - little did she know how it showed up in her work! She often, and brazenly, used the wrong words in the wrong context because she didn't know any better - and she was the editor of a city magazine!