Is there anyone else out there who is afraid that the art of the written word is close to extinction? I know I am. Now I realize I have no children, but I do have three nieces, a great-nephew and a god-daughter with whom I had close contact with as they were growing up.
I watched as they progressed through school and it was then that I started to notice that things were changing in the US public schools and not for the better. The changes were small at first and then towards the end of my great-nephew’s public schooling career, it spiraled out of control.
Granted, I was not the best of students and English was never my strongest suit. Literature was more my thing then. Math was probably the worst of my subjects and I still have issues with it to this day. Numbers are still a struggle but that is mostly because I just don’t like it. All I can say here is, thank the powers that be for having a friend who is an accountant.
However, I did get the basics of the English language and although I had forgotten a lot of it, as some editors have pointed out—repeatedly—I do pretty okay for the most part. I do think that part of it is that if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Alright, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Back then we had to diagram sentences, learn about such disturbing things such as participles and how they dangle. Of course, when they said dangle I thought of other things, so I missed a lot of that discussion as I had a book in my lap. Oh, the joys of puberty.
Please pass the salt.
That was the sentence I remember most. It was on a test when I was in fifth grade, I believe. We were to diagram this sentence, naming all the parts. Color me oh surprised when I got it right, whereas a lot of my fellow students missed it. For such a simple sentence, it managed to stump quite a few.
I think what I find most disturbing is listening to parents of children who are currently in school, and I have been listening more closely of late. What I hear is downright scary. Their use of the English language is quite atrocious. How are they to teach their children when they themselves can’t put a basic sentence together without butchering it? Of course this isn’t everyone, but it seems to me to be the majority.
Another concern I have is that they are not teaching cursive writing. My mother and father both had beautiful penmanship, as does my sister. To me, it looked like art. The way it scrolled and flowed was almost magical. Me…well, I have chicken scratch. Never did master that. I think I was too impatient, but I can do it and it is at least legible.
A friend, who is a high school English teacher, has to grade papers and she has a difficult time in reading said papers. She showed me an example once and I was amazed she could read it at all. Oh, and not one of them was in cursive. All print and most were a mess. She has over one hundred and twenty papers to go over at any given time. How she manages it is beyond me.
Is it that I’m just getting older and more cantankerous as I age? Am I too picky? I don’t think I am, but perhaps I am.
So, what do you, the readers think? Should cursive writing be taken out of the curriculum and replaced with keyboard skills? Mind you, I had both and I seem to have managed to survive before the internet took over.
Oh, and one last thing: Do not blame the teachers. They have no control over what is being taught anymore. They are held to such a strict guideline that they have no leeway at all. This common core thing here in the States is a complete and total disaster. When you have a parent with a PhD who can’t get through fourth grade math, then there is something seriously wrong.
Just my thoughts and curious if I was the only one that is afraid that book reading may become a thing of the past.
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U.S. schools taught English in a much more organised way. I suspect we were in school around the same time and I’ve never heard of diagramming a sentence.
In UK schools, we’ve recently gone back to a more grammar-based English curriculum, starting in primary. How this will affect overall outcomes remains to be seen, but anything that raises standards of literacy has got to be good.
It’s the same here in Canada. When my sister complained to the school that my niece couldn’t spell or do simple math, she was told that everyone has computers and phones that have spell check (because that works so well) and calculators. As a result, when I worked in the retail industry for that last five years, we had cashiers who couldn’t figure out how to make change. When I look at the spelling of the young people on my Facebook and other social media, I’m horrified.
Oh yeah…I remember standing at the blackboard in front of the whole class diagramming sentences. I hated it, but I was good at it. 🙂