4 ms·

How old are you? The baby boom generation seems mostly literate, but my generation, gen Y, is basically incapable of constructing a sentence. In my senior yea

by dfranke 18y ago

How old are you? The baby boom generation seems mostly literate, but my generation, gen Y, is basically incapable of constructing a sentence. In my senior year high school English class I had a teacher who liked me, so she had me grade papers in lieu of some other work. In particular, I remember proofreading drafts of my classmates' college admissions essays. They were deplorable. The best one was grammatically tolerable, adhering closely to the rigid five-paragraph "keyhole" format that we'd all had drilled into our heads, but was all about how much the author loved playing Counterstrike and the lessons it taught him about teamwork. The worst few were outright incomprehensible. I handed those back to the teacher unedited and asked her whether their authors spoke English as their native language. They did. And this was an honors class at what is generally considered the strongest public high school in Florida.

emmett 18y ago
The data seem to suggest that, while those students were certainly deplorable, average literacy is actually at an all time high: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp
- dfranke 18y ago
  Those statistics end at 1979, but I don't doubt that you're correct. The problem here is not literacy per se: these students would have no trouble transcribing between written and spoken English. The problem is with composition and comprehension.
  - emmett 18y ago
    I completely agree that's a huge problem. I just don't think things were any better in the past in composition or comprehension.
gambino 18y ago
I'm Gen X - the High School I attended, and ultimately received my GED from was inner city. While we had more Ivy League acceptances from our student body than any other local public school, we also had on-campus murders, armed police officers roaming the halls, and a bathroom that no one but drug dealers and users went into. I left school my senior year, and went into a career in computers. I had been a part of the "computer underground" since 12 or 13, and knew UNIX better than most admins. I couldn't speak or write properly however. Turns out employers, weren't too keen on odd combination of l33+ sp34/<, and street slag. I relied on two co-workers over my first several years of work to teach me English. I think I've been free of "tooken" for nearly a decade. Thank God. It wasn't the school's fault, I made a choice. I could of easily gone to a decent college, but laziness and lack of priorities could have derailed my life. I was lucky enough to have these guys take an interest in me.

by dfranke 18y ago

emmett 18y ago

The data seem to suggest that, while those students were certainly deplorable, average literacy is actually at an all time high: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

dfranke 18y ago
Those statistics end at 1979, but I don't doubt that you're correct. The problem here is not literacy per se: these students would have no trouble transcribing between written and spoken English. The problem is with composition and comprehension.
- emmett 18y ago
  I completely agree that's a huge problem. I just don't think things were any better in the past in composition or comprehension.

gambino 18y ago

I'm Gen X - the High School I attended, and ultimately received my GED from was inner city. While we had more Ivy League acceptances from our student body than any other local public school, we also had on-campus murders, armed police officers roaming the halls, and a bathroom that no one but drug dealers and users went into. I left school my senior year, and went into a career in computers. I had been a part of the "computer underground" since 12 or 13, and knew UNIX better than most admins. I couldn't speak or write properly however. Turns out employers, weren't too keen on odd combination of l33+ sp34/<, and street slag. I relied on two co-workers over my first several years of work to teach me English. I think I've been free of "tooken" for nearly a decade. Thank God. It wasn't the school's fault, I made a choice. I could of easily gone to a decent college, but laziness and lack of priorities could have derailed my life. I was lucky enough to have these guys take an interest in me.