3 ms·

10 years ago I would have put a lot of money on the farmers having difficulty selling to city dwellers because low literacy left them with no way to sell things

10 years ago I would have put a lot of money on the farmers having difficulty selling to city dwellers because low literacy left them with no way to sell things except phonetically. If the elites are hitting the literacy level of the lowest and least educated, it could be setting up a new par that more people can match. Why give a job to an elite when you can give it to some farm boy desperate for cash if they're both dependent solely on phonetic language.

jerf 16y ago
Well, since no English speakers use an ideographic language for English and we're all spelling... sort of... phonetically, there is clearly no reason to prefer a college-educated journalism major to write or edit for the NYT, we can just grab any ol' dirt farmer, right? There's more to "literacy" than having muscle memory for writing an enormous swathe of characters of dubious usefulness, something most languages manage to do entirely without.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  By the amount of spelling errors I've seen in NYT articles, I think hiring a dozen high school-only farm boys would garner better results than paying the university schlubs they've already got doing their proof-reading. Print Journalism courses have been increasingly irrelevant since Gonzo became increasingly mainstream. Music, sports, etc. all rely more on personal opinion than they ever did. Journalism courses don't teach personal opinion, it's innate. Major editors in the UK have openly expressed that they aren't interested in journalism graduates, they care more about personal experiences handed to them with an example of good writing with personal experience. Pick up a british tabloid, it isn't Journalism courses teaching writing completely biased completely unobjective articles. I have friends in journalism, I know they're not, and I know they're going to struggle like all hell to get a job.

jerf 16y ago

Well, since no English speakers use an ideographic language for English and we're all spelling... sort of... phonetically, there is clearly no reason to prefer a college-educated journalism major to write or edit for the NYT, we can just grab any ol' dirt farmer, right? There's more to "literacy" than having muscle memory for writing an enormous swathe of characters of dubious usefulness, something most languages manage to do entirely without.

electromagnetic 16y ago
By the amount of spelling errors I've seen in NYT articles, I think hiring a dozen high school-only farm boys would garner better results than paying the university schlubs they've already got doing their proof-reading. Print Journalism courses have been increasingly irrelevant since Gonzo became increasingly mainstream. Music, sports, etc. all rely more on personal opinion than they ever did. Journalism courses don't teach personal opinion, it's innate. Major editors in the UK have openly expressed that they aren't interested in journalism graduates, they care more about personal experiences handed to them with an example of good writing with personal experience. Pick up a british tabloid, it isn't Journalism courses teaching writing completely biased completely unobjective articles. I have friends in journalism, I know they're not, and I know they're going to struggle like all hell to get a job.