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Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone
Ant writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting look at the current standards of writing and the general decline of spelling and grammar in today's "comic book generation." The author blames many of the problems on instant or near-instant communications stating that the slang developed is essentially eroding our ability to formulate coherent thoughts in writing when called upon to do so.
OMGHI2U! Y helo thar LOLERSKATES!
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
I often find those complaining about degredation of language are those of that generation which have to be shown how to open a word document.
Now while this isn't universal, I'd like to say this to the older generation. Face it old timers, where did all your learning times tables by rote and perfect spelling get you? It got you a set of redundant skills in a world of spell checkers, hand held calculators and 17 year olds who you have to ask nicely if you want that file you corrupted fixed.
The world moved on, we expect kids these days to have an insanely wide base of skills. So we diversified our curriculum, making qualifications easier but broader. And then wondered why it was we got a generation that couldn't spell or add.
The real travesty of the situation isn't that the younger generation cant spell or add. They have no need of these skills. The real travesty is that we dropped things like calculus from secondary education, matricies from high school, poetic techniques have been dumbed down to the point that we tell kids what an Alliteration is, and how to tell if words rhyme. All so we could keep a little bit of spelling, times tables and addition in the curriculum.
It is time to acknowledge that modern man does not need these outdated skills, and has found a better way. Drop them, and in thier place have children doing the hard stuff again.