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

[unforth.livejournal.com]

This is going to sound bad, but I've wondered if the apparent "decline in literacy" isn't attributable to the rise in the number of people going to college; which is to say, I've wondered if it isn't that people are getting dumber, it's that more dumb people are going farther in terms of their education, and so it shows more. Like, over all, literacy is probably much higher on a basic level than at any point in the past (except perhaps the recent past). I do also think some of this is a problem with our education system; it blows my mind how illiterate even supposedly intelligent/well educated people are...but I do wonder...

How was Good Night and Good Luck? I've wanted to see it for some time now...

And the prescription bottle thing is just frightening...maybe some "survival of the fittest" will kick in and the people so dumb that they accidently overdose because they couldn't understand "two doses twice daily" will be weeded from the gene pool....

[fallenrose.livejournal.com]

Btw, is your icon the ruin of the oracle at Dephi, or is it something else? Because it looks like it.

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

Gee, maybe if the composition courses taught students how to read and write instead of focusing on the loftier critical goals that might improve? You know. Just a thought. As university educators we can't control what happens before students get here and just go blaming everything on high schools. As much as it might be true that students ought to be better equipped before they get here, I'm equally appalled by the fact that college composition courses at IU don't teach the rudiments of writing (or correct assiduously for grammar and spelling), even when it's flamingly obvious that's what's needed in that class. Of course, you've heard me say all that before.