The Degradation of Basic Education

[Caduceus55]

While scouring the internet for news and information to include in my Blog, I am constantly astonished at the deplorable grammar and lack of punctuation. Especially in an era of "spellcheck" and where even your browser can point out your spelling mistakes, these are continually left unchecked. If you can't spell a word properly, don't use it, or if you want to use it, learn how to spell it.

Now I know the internet is an international community, so some of this can be attributed to those whose English is not their first language, but there is far too much evidence for this to be the case in all instances. Forming a complete sentence is fast becoming a thing of the past, except of course in areas that require it. Is it lack of knowledge, lack of guidance or simple laziness? Whatever the answer, it's rampant.

This trend also spills over into simple math equations or transactions. My extra-large coffee costs $1.59 and if I give the server a toonie (yes, I'm Canadian), I watched in utter dismay as they check, not once, but twice or three times at the register, in order to calculate my change. Again, this is not all the time, but enough to be very concerning as to the fate of this coming generation and the next to follow.

I guess I'm just old school, as I did not learn my mathematics on a calculator, nor did I hand in assignments typed and printed from a computer. I learned my times-tables, practiced my cursive writing and had red marker put on my papers where punctuation should have gone. Our reliance on computer-generated tasks has seriously degraded our fundamental skills. As evolution has shown, when a skill or talent is no longer needed, or employed, it withers and dies.



Thoughts?

 

[Zantos]

I don't think education has degraded, education is at a high standard of teaching and support across most of the world right now. Whenever I encounter these problems, I see it more as an attitude to education that is the issue. People aren't interested, or don't think it's important, or have better things to do. I literally, when we left school about 5 years ago, got told by a girl that she was going to forget all her maths because it would never be use to her again. Now working as a cashier she has the same problem with giving change, not because her education was flawed but because she refused to acknowledge it.

I mean, it is possible to construct an argument about how it's the education's responsibility to make sure that this does happen. I can only speak for Britain in this to say though, the syllabus is well structured and the curriculum focuses on important aspects of each subject and tries to balance them with the time given. There are varying degrees of teaching quality but all teachers are teaching them the right things and want to get the job done. Education is fine, it's the attitudes that need sorting out.

 

[Stall]

Certain fields and skills people don't typically use tend to fall in disarray over time. Some people out there have little need to write in a grammatically correct way; ergo, their grammatical skills tend to decrease. Instant communication doesn't help either. The same more-or-less goes for mathematics: there are plenty of people who don't need to add or subtract, so the skill just falls into disarray. Education isn't getting worse really... it's just human nature.

Even I can testify to this. I went out of high school with a vocabulary well above the average. But now that I'm entering my third year of college, where I am studying a very mathematically intense science, my vocab has dropped a fair bit. It's just a matter of efficiency I suppose: you forget things you don't use to make room for something else.

 

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

It's just that, to the majority not needed or useless. People do things now and and they want things now and dammit grammar gets in the way. Plus with the whole "no child gets left behind" combined with the "everyone is s special snowflake" mentality in schools nowadays, well it's a bad combination.

And some of it is pure laziness. I have a bad habit when I type, i almost always type the word to ot backwards, seldom correct it, just can't be bother to.

Yes, I am also aware that the preceding statement had multiple grammar, syntax and punctuation errors. However, I am being lazy and do not care for such things as I felt that they were both needless and irrelevant to the topic at hand. ;-)

 

[silent_noir_67]

I think that personally the speed at which you are expected to reply/respond to certain information is the reason. Facebook chat and MSN has made it incredibly difficult to read and edit your statements if you want to get a word in edgewise. condensing I'm to im is just a faster way of expressing your opinion faster.

also, when you're not forced to do something then you'll take the easier route, such as the case with the punctuation and mathematics when a computer does it faster

 

[Hero in a half shell]

There can be several reasons for spelling mistakes in posts, here are some I have encountered and fallen foul of myself.

1. Typing mistakes: Since the comments are typed and not written it is very easy to hit the wrong keys. Some of your mistakes you might not notice, and they end up in the post, these will usually be quite rare.

2. Text-speak: With texting on mobile phones and tweets, deliberately shortening or spelling words phonetically has become a pretty common, accepted occurence, not just in texts and tweets where it makes sense, but online as well, where you don't have to pay for your character usage.

3. Dyslexia: Not a common one, but if you see a terrible, mistake riddled comment then it is actually quite likely that the person has some form of dyslexia, although there are spell checks to help them, some people just don't bother to check their spelling, and let it loose on the interwebs in all it's warbly glory, which brings us too...

4. Laziness: sometimes you just cant be bothered to search through your post for all the spelling and grammar errors that you make.

5. Editing posts: This is one I am frequently guilty of, in my longer posts, as I will read through them and edit several times, moving around large portions of text or rephrasing bits so it so it sounds better. This frequently accidentally leads to grammar errors in tenses, unneccessary plurals, and sentences that run into each other and just plain don't make any sense.

Of course there are people who are really bad at spelling and punctuation due to poor education, (usually everyone featured on Failbook), but literacy levels in most developed countries are incredibly high, although I wouldn't fancy being educated in any of the inner city schools servicing poorer areas.

 

[Caduceus55]

I realize I have put too much the onus on the teachers and left the parenting out of the equation, which is unfair. No amount of teaching is going to "stick" or be absorbed if the parent(s) do not support or enforce the issue. If you allow your child to be a "slacker" at home, chances are it will carry over into every aspect of their life.

 

[TheCorpseMan99]

I'm sorry, but are we just going to overlook the fact that he called the site "Zero Punctuation"? Because it's clearly not, and that debunks your whole "irony' line, as well as a good deal of your credibility (which isn't a lot to begin with, what with you being Canadian and all.)

 

[Turigamot]

In the spirit of CorpseMan99's post, I would also like to point out that you spelled 'degradation' incorrectly. This is irony.


As to whether or not I agree with you: eh, more or less. The fact is, we live in a time of instant gratification. The way we educate can no longer hold the interest of the youth of this era. Classrooms need to be reevaluated, the system reformed. I suggest you look up a presentation by a man named Salman Khan on TED.com. It's pretty inspiring.

 

[Baneat]

Thread title. OP just failed >.<

Education in developed countries only improves, given that an IQ of 100 now would be 120+ in the past,

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm not sure you actually know the name of the site you're on.

Anyways, I think that current education is overrated. Taking the trades approach from the beginning would be a better idea, maybe allowing current education up to grade three or so.

 

[Caduceus55]

I'm sorry, but are we just going to overlook the fact that he called the site "Zero Punctuation"? Because it's clearly not, and that debunks your whole "irony' line, as well as a good deal of your credibility (which isn't a lot to begin with, what with you being Canadian and all.)

Yes, that should have read "with" Zero Punctuation. And you would be, what, anti-Canadian?

@Turigamot: Good point and quite the over-sight. However, I'm not a spelling nazi, rather I'm pointing out whole posts or articles of sentences that make little sense due to their grammar and structure.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

We're talking about comment sections on the Internet, places which are predominately colloquial in nature where people spend approximately 2-5 minutes to succintly elucidate their opinion and thus do not take the same time to peruse, analyse and re-draft their work with the necessary iterations in the same way they would for something there grade was dependant on. You have no way of extrapolating their English skills on the basis of punctuation alone and this also does not display their aptitude in any other academic subjects. Basically you have no substantial evidence to support such an audacious claim about the standards of contemporary education and your post comes as the condescending platitudinous ramblings of a man who hasn't sat an exam in 20 years and still feels qualified to judge their difficulty.

 

[Thaius]

See, I can't speak for Canada, but the American education system is a poorly-designed, ineffective mess. It has all the wrong priorities, all the wrong philosophies, and all the wrong requirements. It's an awful excuse for an education system that needs to be completely destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. Issue being, it fails in the ways you specify, but in an attempt to cover for that failure ends up causing trouble for the people who are actually learned and focused. There is nothing worse than going through high school and college in this system and having a clear plan for your future, because based on our current setup the assumption is that you go through those years with no education and no freaking clue as to how you want to spend your life. Sucks for the rest of us; the lowest common denominator rules all.

 

[Caduceus55]

You presume to assume a lot. I am not just referring to comment areas. I am also continually upgrading my education, so it appears that you know not of what you speak.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

because i really don't care?

besides someone shifting around that pipe up in there ass, there is zero reason for me to care one single bit on how you perceive my spelling and grammar, if i get my point across in the same speed as what i would have done if i had used proper capitalization and punctuation, then i see no point in doing it as it only aggravates me in the long run.

going into engineering, grammar and english are basically dead to me, as i hate both the subjects and they are highly unneeded, however give me any math/science problem and i'll mop the floor/hold my own with any old fart. if anything education is getting better and better from what i've seen, it's just parents don't give two shits and let their child sneak by and the 20% of kids who actually pay attention are going to be smarter than i was when i got out of high school, hell i'm already teaching my brothers calculus 1 and 2 and one of them is just starting high school and the other is just starting middle school.

what you see as a "fundamental" skill, i see as "useless garbage" skill, and most of my common sense/basic skills are degree level for some old farts.

 

[Caduceus55]

Really? You see conveying yourself in a clear, concise manner "useless" and only the domain of "old farts". Good luck in your future endeavors if you feel these skills "garbage". Wait until you have to write a report or give a presentation, or even convince your boss that you deserve a raise.

This is communication in the written word and in a sense, shows your level of cognitive ability, whether you realize it or not.

I'm curious. How has this become less of a discussion and more of an attack on a certain viewpoint? Do some of you have a guilty conscience?

 

[Dags90]

As evolution has shown, when a skill or talent is no longer needed, or employed, it withers and dies.

You may want to refresh on your evolution, because it hasn't shown that at all. Why do desert animals retain swimming instincts? Try again.

Also, this is a nitpick, but the only time I've had trouble with cashiers is with people who didn't have proper job training. All the well trained cashiers I've met don't "calculate" the change as traditionally taught in school, they count up from the purchase price to the cash tendered.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Really? You see conveying yourself in a clear, concise manner "useless" and only the domain of "old farts". Good luck in your future endeavors if you feel these skills "garbage". Wait until you have to write a report or give a presentation, or even convince your boss that you deserve a raise.

This is communication in the written word and in a sense, shows your level of cognitive ability, whether you realize it or not.

I'm curious. How has this become less of a discussion and more of an attack on a certain viewpoint? Do some of you have a guilty conscience?

i was just giving some slight thoughts on this..which is what i thought you asked for?

(just a small tip, if you want someone to see you were talking to them, use the quote button, it'll get you responses much faster if you were talking to a specific person or wanted to include someone in the discussion on that part)

and to your writing reports and presentations, considering the fact i got a score of "4" out of 5 on the AP world history test (my paper in the hour and and 15 we had to write it ended up being 6 pages long) while most of my classmates got 2's or 3's, i'd like to think that speaks for itself, not to mention that I got an A in my construction materials class last semester for my presentation on the project we were assigned which involved putting together a 30+ slide presentation and two papers on it.

and in the past 8 years that i've had my current job...i've gotten 4 raises, to 14 dollars an hour, i'd like to think that's pretty well done. But correct me if i'm wrong on that.

I didn't outright say it, but i will now i suppose; what you call as "important" and "fundamentals", are next to useless to me to use in every day purposes, while my maths and sciences are at extreme levels of usage every day, so balancing out the ratio of english/grammar/vocab to my maths/sciences is next to nil for the former.

 

[Phlakes]

I don't mean to be rude, but lighten up. Take a chillaxative. We don't all have to be professional linguists. This coming from a massive Grammar Nazi who's written two large threads about the subject, and I still made the point of casual but correct.

Let me make this clear-

The internet is the absolute least formal place in the entire world.

Just like you don't pull out the Lit professor vocabulary with your friends, you don't treat chat messages as formal essays.

So I personally take liberties with my internet writing, maybe using sentence fragments. Like this. Because the thing is, it doesn't fucking matter whether I make that a fragment or stick it behind a comma in the last sentence.

But there's a difference between taking liberties and being wrong.

Actually, that's a good point. Grammar is like drawing a person. You (OP, not a general you) think everyone should draw them 100% anatomically correct and proportional. But there's no reason people can't draw them stylized. It's not technically accurate, but there's nothing wrong with it. But just like before, although they're both not accurate, there's a difference between drawing a stylized person and just drawing it badly.