Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Hi, EF! Here are a couple of ideas. First, we take it for granted that students wrote and spoke better some time ago than they do now. That may be true but I'd like to see some good, hard evidence for that view, just so I can feel more certain before I get too serious thinking about the reasons for it. For the sake of argument let's say it is true, at least to some degree.

I wonder if part of the reason is what we might call gotcha grammar. It seems to me that those more skilled in English are more willing today to point out the grammatical mistakes of others. I believe that bad grammar is one of the more popular pet peeves, even among people who are not very proficient themselves. Pots like to call kettles black.

Your post talks about college kids and there's no doubt that a higher percentage of kids are going to college today than before. If the same percentage of kids went to college before as do now, we might have seen a similar rate of English non-proficiency. In the good old days of good grammar, kids who didn't do as well academically more often than not didn't go to college and went on to work at middle class blue collar jobs. Even today a fairly high percentage of successful CEO's don't have college degrees.

I can tell you from my own experience as a student and as a parent that students had to write a lot more papers when I went to school (at all grade levels, including college) than today's students. Over the years I have had some frustrating discussions with teachers about this. On the other hand, I remember I had plenty of classmates who hated to write as much as many kids hate to write today, so there was nothing magical about requiring more writing assignments. In general, in the past as today, the kids who wrote best enjoyed writing, or at least didn't hate it. Good writing takes a lot of thought and work, and skill at writing is not as valued as some of the other “nerdy” academic skills such as math and science. Do good writing skills lead to a well-paying career as certainly as good math or science skills? Most people would think not. It's simply not valued as much, and in my opinion, math and science are easier than writing stuff that people actually want not only to read, but to pay for to read.

And yes, I could get into other things like the Internet, YouTube, video games, MP3 players, and 24/7 TV entertainment, providing endless distractions for students when they might have read a few more books before. It's hard to imagine good writers who don't like to read.

I second that emotion, Grant, and maybe if the daily TV shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune featured college and highschool kids more often Americans would get the message that there are a lot of great students. Of course, smart kids are frequently featured in movies, TV sitcoms, cartoons, and video games, but I suspect that people see those as more scripted than real (and they would be right).