[Gail White]

It's not just the writing, either. My husband was recently asked by a college student if Africa had countries in it.

[John Whitworth]

Whos wuds thees arr I think I no
His haus is in the vilij tho
Hee wil not see me stopin heer
To wotch his wuds fil up with sno

[Janice D. Soderling]

John Riley is right and he points to an international trend.

The essence of the Bologna Process http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher...doc1290_en.htm is to prioritize education that augments competitiveness, which is good if it leads to more jobs, bad if it leads to fewer.

Prioritizing spelling and grammar will not raise the gross domestic product like prioritizing skills in 3D computer animation will.

Long time ago, pre-PC and before programming skills were outsourced, I developed and taught courses in technical English for various levels of computer people, ranging from hardware engineers (getting supplementary skills from the now defunct national employment office) who would service main frames, to post-grads. The goal was to facilitate an understanding of the terminology of technical manuals and textbooks for non-native speakers.

I was later approached to develop a course in writing technical English for engineering students at university. But my reply was that no one can teach students to write good technical writing in English if they can't write adequately in Swedish.

And though I am a founding member of the Word Nerd Society of Greater Eratosphere, I am not convinced that the ability to write perfectly (analytically, good grammar, spelling, etc.) should be a requirement for everyone but certainly for those who make, or intend to make, their living at writing. I have seen countless examples of bad writing but brilliant thinking from professors, scientists, etc.

There are many professional writers who can translate bad writing into understandable text.

Obviously the scientist who can also write well has an economic advantage over those who have to hire me and my sort.

However, I do think we should demand good writing when we read newspapers, magazines, textbooks, literary journals (on- or offline) etc.

Excellence should be required of professional writers and translators whether commercial or literary and from those posting in this forum . That is unfortunately not the case at present.

[G. M. Palmer]

Two things:

"I would put most of the blame on an underfunded and overly regimented primary and secondary education system that actively discourages initiative among the students."

Is, in part, vastly wrong--they encourage too much "initiative among the students." Students are expected to teach themselves and learn everything in group work. Unfortunately (as has been shown in recent research) students don't actually learn anything from each other (except things we'd rather them not learn). Indeed, I even read a peer-reviewed article last month (no link, sorry) about how lecture is invaluable and we are disservicing our students by depriving them of "the sound of high language well-spoken."

Now, the sentiment of Quincy's quote is right--kids are, in general, repressed in school. Part of this is good--we want them to grow up, not grow out. But part of this is awful--dreams are crushed daily in the halls of academia.

How to fix this?

Well, for that you have to go to Janice, who said something about making good consumers.

That is precisely correct.

In the early part of the 20th century, a cabal of corporate-board foundations got together to change the way Americans were taught (indeed, bringing this to light was the about only decent thing that came out of the McCarthy Era witch-hunts). There is a reason that the Ford Foundation and the Guggenheim foundation et al support educating teachers and use methods created by the Prussians and the Soviets to make good, mindless citizens.

So we teach our kids to be drones because then they buy things along a predictable pattern.

The answer? Have kids and homeschool them. Homeschool yourself. Make yourself smarter. Make people you know smarter. Write and write some more.

Also, I would like to add that there are a LOT of college professors who view it as their sacred right to indoctrinate students into their own worldviews--including the history professor who tried to tell me no returning Vietnam soldier was ever spit upon and the English professor who tried his best to make me a Marxist.

Because good, mindless citizens are GREAT consumers and, when needed, great cannon fodder, too.

[Vernon Sims]

we r n dyer st8's ndeed
wit all text teach us
i don unnerstn the need
4 splchuckers to fuss

wastd time pass the dzpm
i thnks i gettin anksus

[Tim Murphy]

I don't mean to bash the professoriate. Although if kids are taught Emily Dickinson by reference to encoded images of Lesbian sex or never read a Shakespeare play but instead are fed books arguing that he is the archfiend of the white male patriarchy, I get a little fed-up. Indeed the English profs who are my friends (and they are legion, many of them here) are some of the hardest working people I know.

I don't really teach. I've performed A LOT, at colleges here or in Britain, at this fabulous Catholic high school where I work pro bono say, ten days a year. Parents will honestly mortgage their homes to send their kids there, especially Asian parents. So I know this is not representative. Still, it's a thrill to teach kids who can write a cogent book review and comprehend a college level lecture on meter.

If I had never taken an English class in my life, it wouldn't have made much difference, for my parents were English teachers, and in our house the six of us read books and wrote. And captained the debate team! Six lucky kids.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Basically I am against home-schooling because that is where real indoctrination takes place. Interaction skills, so essential to a good citizen, are not enhanced if the child has never come into contact with differing views or had a schoolmate who was "other".

An exception to that would be if illness make it not possible, or if the teacher has exceptional skills and qualifications and a desire to expand the mind-set rather to shrink it. I can think of at least one person I know (know virtually) who does this.

But in many, perhaps most, cases, parents wish to home-school to protect their child from views that differ from their own, often for so-called religious reasons. This is brainwashing.

[William A. Baurle]

GM Palmer: Because good, mindless citizens are GREAT consumers and, when needed, great cannon fodder, too.

Exactly.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

Basically I am against home-schooling because that is where real indoctrination takes place. Interaction skills, so essential to a good citizen, are not enhanced if the child has never come into contact with differing views or had a schoolmate who was "other".

An exception to that would be if illness make it not possible, or if the teacher has exceptional skills and qualifications and a desire to expand the mind-set rather to shrink it. I can think of at least one person I know (know virtually) who does this.

But in many, perhaps most, cases, parents wish to home-school to protect their child from views that differ from their own, often for so-called religious reasons. This is brainwashing.

I agree in the main that home schooling does take away the thing that I always considered to be the principle purpose of public education: socialization skills, and getting it into a kid's head that life is all about having to do things that you don't want to do and that being on time is important.

That being said, I think it's mighty suspicious that my eldest, at 14, knows for a certainty that one whiff of second-hand cigarette smoke will kill him instantly, but had no idea (when I asked him) what the European Union is, or that there even is such a thing.

Bonkers.

[John Riley]

There is too much ideology in public education and in ed schools but it certainly isn't all left-wing. Remember William Bennett and the disaster of the "Back to Basics" movement? The Core Curriculum is well on its way to becoming the closest thing we have to a national curriculum and it is certainly no left-wing dream. An ideological approach to education is destructive regardless of which side it comes from. Many of the teachers I know go about their business and try their best to ignore the political noise and do the best job they can in their under-funded school. There is no single cause of the problems in education and there is no "if only they'd do this" answer.

I'm a liberal but I'll confess that I think Gilbert Highet's The Art of Teaching is still the best book I've ever read about teaching.