[Leica] declining quality of writing

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

This thread disturbs me a good deal.

I was graduated from High School (what the British would call "A" Levels)
in 1968, from College in 1972, and earned a Master's Degree in 1974 and a
Law Degree in 1981.  I also was graduated from the US Army's Command and
General Staff College in 1984 and both taught their extension course from
1987 until 1991 but also served as Adjunct Faculty (a paper-grader) from
1987 until 1994.  I have taught college-level courses sporadically since
1985 and my wife is currently adjunct faculty at a local Business College.  

In both of my High Schools, the ability to write was simply presumed.
There was nothing about "three errors and you are told to rewrite".  Most
teachers had the approach that one spelling or grammatical error was enough
to warrant a loss of one grade.  We learned, rapidly, how to spell and how
to string a cognizable sentence.  My college (Washington & Lee University)
did not have a "bone-head" English class:  they simply had Regular English
and Advanced English, and we were all expected to know how to write.  If we
did not know, we were required to learn how to do so.  (One of the very few
good things I can say about social fraternities is that they all worked to
tutor their pledges in how to overcome a lack of knowledge in basic skills
such as writing, and my college was heavily fraternity.)

In graduate and law school, no corners were cut, nor were they in Command
and General Staff College.  You had to be able to write.  No one would
grade you down for an awkward sentence but they certainly would grade you
down for a grammatical howler, such as "hopefully" in place of "I hope
that":  this one earned me a 15-minute conference with the Chairman of the
Classics Department at Yale, who was shocked to learn that I had never had
that one explained to me, perhaps an earlier version of the discussion on
decline we are having here:  certainly, my father learned more grammar in
Junior High than I learned in High School.  

I had grand fun in grading Command & General Staff College papers for seven
years.  C&GS is a mid-level (25-35 year old) professional military course
which is roughly equivalent to an MBA;  graduation from it is required for
promotion to Lieutenant Colonel or the equivalent in any of the military
services.  The folks sending in papers ranged from non-college types
(grandfathered before the requirement for a college degree to obtain a
commission became mandatory in 1983 or thereabouts) to, in one case, a
Post-Doc scholar at the Kennedy School.  All could write;  on occasion, I
noted what I perceived as grammatical errors and almost always received a
response, generally critical of my knowledge of communication skills.  We
did have some fascinating discussion!  (It is amazing how many educated
speakers cannot tell the difference between the aorist use (the general
continuative) and the present, past, and future of the same in English,
much less to comprehend the distinction between the perfective and
imperfective moods in English.   

No good-hearted teacher enjoys flunking a student.  I will give them EVERY
possible break, including make-up tests and accepting late assignments and
the like but, in the end, there is a bottom level beneath which I will not
go, and, yes, I have flunked students (hell, I taught for a while at a
local college which prides itself on "getting every student to graduation"
and I flunked one of THEIR students without repercussion and, yes, I taught
there for several more years).  But it is not pleasant.

The older British colleges (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, &c)  have the right
idea, I suspect, in requiring their students both to know how to write and
to demonstrate this weekly by the submission to their tutors of essays on
an assigned topic.  J R R Tolkien spoke disparingly of the quality of
writing he encountered at Oxford in the 1920's and 1930's but I find his
comments thick and dense, as I find little wrong with the passages he cites
as illustrative of this -- they are stylistically clumsy but grammatically
and synticatically clear.

The ability to write clearly is vital, as is the ability to speak clearly.
Language does evolve, and I pity those who do not comprehend this, else we
would all be still be speaking Old English, in which event we probably
would know what that "Hwaet!" at the beginning of Beowulf really does mean.
 But the pace of change is slow:  many English speakers of today could
understand some Old English and a greater number could understand a lot of
Middle English -- do not be thrown for a loop by the spelling, as ten
minutes in a room with someone speaking it to you would allow you to
understand the vowel and consonant shifts which have made the spelling seem
so odd, and, in a couple of hours, any of us could probably communicate in
it so long as we had a dictionary for the vocabulary.  (For instance, an
Anglo-Saxon "ceorl" is what we would now consider someone on the cusp of
lower and middle class existence, while our current "churl" indicates a
debased peasant;  the Old English "Ic luvie ?e" (the last should be "the"
if your word processor does not comprehend the Old English thorn diagraph),
pronounced "Eech Loovie They" only sounds odd as we replaced the proper
second-person singular (thee, thou, thine, &c) with the "bourgeoisie
plural" (you, you, yours, &c):  it means "I love you" and is hauntingly
close to the modern English equivalent.)

All of this is BASIC knowledge which should be known by any first-year
college student.  Let us teach them grammar, spelling, and style.  Let us
THEN let them learn literary appreciation and analysis, courses out of
which I got very little.  But let them learn the basics first.  (I am not
bragging, as this was pretty much the norm for a college-bound High School
student in my time, but I ended up with four years of English, four years
of History (including an AP American History Course), two years of biology,
a year each of chemistry and physics, four years of math (including the
Calculus), four years of Latin, two years of Russian, and, of course, four
years of Physical Education, not my favorite course but one which I managed
to get behind me.  Kids today get away with no foreign languages, one or
two years of science, English, math (generally ending at Pre-Algebra), and
the like, with lots of Art and Social Consciousness classes.  This is
wonderful for the well-rounded soul, perhaps (though I would argue this)
but does absolutely nothing for preparation of the well-rounded student
and/or citizen.)

My son, aetate 22, is quite a wonderful person and I am proud that he is my
son.  He is working his way on his own through college in Alaska while
working full-time as a mud-man (plasterer to you heathans) and supporting
his pregnant girl friend (and, yes, I am FAR too young to be a grandfather
and thought has me in deep fibrullation as I contemplate the idea).  He is
a fascinating mix of intellectual (his analysis of books, especially
militrary history, is superlative, and he is a judge at the Alaska State
High School Debate Tournaments, where he lists his academic qualifications
as "Plasterer in Eagle River") and worker (his bosses love him because he
can calm down an angry owner and can cut a compromise effectively, while
his co-workers like him as he is one of the guys and is one hell of a hard
worker).  And he can draft an intelligible note or write an essay:  I have
reviewed his stuff and I can only figure that he has sucked this ability
from his mother (no mean writer, herself) as well as from me:  he certainly
did not obtain this knowledge and sense of style in his High School or
College studies.

Marc

msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!