Literacy Matters

[akashiver]

Y'know, every so often I get annoyed by the "we don't have a problem with declining literacy" brigade. Fact is that literacy - at least on the college level at IU - is way below where it should be. I'm not talking about misplaced commas, here, but about a substantial portion of students not knowing sentence structure or the meanings of words. Worse, no matter how clear a sentence is, some of them just can't follow its meaning once it gets beyond a single phrase. (I was watching _Good Night and Good Luck_ last night and wondering how many Americans today would be able to follow the debate style of the 1950s.)

I've heard this blamed on the education system, on the rise of non-literate technologies, and on students in general. I don't know what the cause is. But reading and being able to interpret sentences accurately is not just an academic exercise. Witness the problems people have with Prescription Bottles".

Comments

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

I think that your observation that college enrollment has become far less selective and/or optional is very important. College is the new high school. Very few jobs of any desirability are available for high school grads, especially since most of our higher paying skilled labor jobs are now outsourced overseas. In theory, late-stage post-industrial capitalist societies have non-labor jobs for most -- but we've also sent our technology support roles and call centers overseas, and I think those jobs would have been the replacement for lost labor jobs. So kids who aren't college-capable or college-ready go to college when they might be better off going someplace like Ivy Tech and getting vocational training, and probably end up not bettering their chances of employment measurably in the process of getting the liberal arts degree. Doesn't make a whack of sense to me, but anecdotally, that seems to be the case. My last personal trainer was a weight-lifter who had a BA in History from the University of Kansas. He could neither spell nor write coherent sentences, and let's face it - as a professional bodybuilder, perhaps that's really not mandatory. Why on earth did he go to the expense of a college education and a degree in history when he had no ambitions related to either? Because that's just what people do, apparently. Mneh.