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Do your colleagues and customers still grasp the finer points of language history? Even if school spent more time on how to write basic emails, I'd suspect it s

Do your colleagues and customers still grasp the finer points of language history? Even if school spent more time on how to write basic emails, I'd suspect it still wouldn't sink in for many children because many of them wouldn't care to apply it. It should only take a couple hours for an educated adult to learn how to write a coherent paragraph. If your coworkers still can't be bothered, then I don't see how forced education would help anyway.

magicalhippo 4y ago
Fair enough, but language history certainly didn't make them any better at it. And memorizing details can be a lot harder and thus more demotivating. It surely can't get much worse if they actually tried teaching kids to write better non-prose.
- arolihas 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with the Norwegian education system but didn't you have classes that required writing essays or at least short answers? If kids go through over a decade of schooling and still cannot write a coherent message well into adulthood, something is fundamentally flawed.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    Sure, but I think non-prose is different enough that it's worth spending more time on it. We did have a bit of it, but pretty insignificant compared to the rest. When I got to high school, nobody in my class could write a half-way decent report for example. Just the basics of what a report even was and what it was supposed to contain. I got the equivalent of a D and the teacher said I had done "by far the best in class", the rest got F's and NR. None of us in class had come from the same junior high schools, so wasn't that. Most of my colleagues seem to have no issue telling a story, but many seem to have problems forming a coherent argument, or asking a non-confusing question, in writing. Again, don't think it would have hurt to have more non-prose experience in the basic education.

magicalhippo 4y ago

Fair enough, but language history certainly didn't make them any better at it. And memorizing details can be a lot harder and thus more demotivating. It surely can't get much worse if they actually tried teaching kids to write better non-prose.

arolihas 4y ago
I'm not familiar with the Norwegian education system but didn't you have classes that required writing essays or at least short answers? If kids go through over a decade of schooling and still cannot write a coherent message well into adulthood, something is fundamentally flawed.
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  Sure, but I think non-prose is different enough that it's worth spending more time on it. We did have a bit of it, but pretty insignificant compared to the rest. When I got to high school, nobody in my class could write a half-way decent report for example. Just the basics of what a report even was and what it was supposed to contain. I got the equivalent of a D and the teacher said I had done "by far the best in class", the rest got F's and NR. None of us in class had come from the same junior high schools, so wasn't that. Most of my colleagues seem to have no issue telling a story, but many seem to have problems forming a coherent argument, or asking a non-confusing question, in writing. Again, don't think it would have hurt to have more non-prose experience in the basic education.