Societal Observation

[PiCO]

I went to a few gatherings this week. One was a business committee I serve on. The seven people on the committee range in age from 35 to 65, about half only had a high school education, the rest had degrees in education. We had to respond to a letter of complaint that was incredibly poorly written- riddled with spelling and gramatical errors, including using know for no, and "under minds" for undermines. There were about 25 errors in this one-page letter. (The author of the letter is 25 yrs old and is in law school.) All the committee members were appalled, but all responded in a professional manner to the complaints at hand.

 

Second gathering- a bridal shower for a 25-yo young woman with a master's degree. Friends also "well educated". These young women could not read aloud lists from the games, and did not know the meaning of many common words they were reading (one of the games was to make a list from A-Z of things that go with a wedding.)

 

So the first group was older people with high school educations or education degrees, the second group was young people with master's degrees. The first group of people just seemed so much better educated. What happened in education 10-15 years ago to cause this rift? These young people are considered well educated, and they are smart kids. Why is their vocabulary so limited? I am amazed.

 

And I know the public education system is currently failing us. I have spent thousand of dollars on "test prep" for my older daughter, and that is what has increased her vocabulary and taught her how to write an organized essay, not public school.

[Farrar]

I wonder how much of the difference was to do with the setting and the motivations for being there. I know we like to decry the state of education these days (and I don't really disagree) but the first group was presumably a group of motivated, interested people (to be serving on a committee) and the second was a random group of young friends who may or may not be motivated, intellectually interested people.

[teamturner]

By any chance do some of these well-educated people originally come from another country? I only mention it because I have noticed that with those whose first language is not English they sometimes struggle with grammar/spelling errors.

 

Just thought I'd see if that was a possibility.

[PiCO]

By any chance do some of these well-educated people originally come from another country? I only mention it because I have noticed that with those whose first language is not English they sometimes struggle with grammar/spelling errors.

 

Just thought I'd see if that was a possibility.

 

Nope. And I knew most of them growing up. They are smart kids, publicly educated in the US.

[Ellie]

Oh, girl, it's been longer than 10-15 years. It's one of the reasons over 25 years ago that I decided that my dc would never go to public school. Even then, there were articles in the newspaper (no Internet, you understand) pointing out that major corporations were holding classes in basic English because its college-educated employees couldn't read or write well. Pathetic.

[PiCO]

I wonder how much of the difference was to do with the setting and the motivations for being there. I know we like to decry the state of education these days (and I don't really disagree) but the first group was presumably a group of motivated, interested people (to be serving on a committee) and the second was a random group of young friends who may or may not be motivated, intellectually interested people.

 

This could be true.

 

Except in the first example, the letter writer was 25. I have no idea why he would not have someone proof-read his letter if knows he has a problem with spelling and grammar. I can't imagine someone being in law school and sending a letter like that.

 

In the second group, the young lady whose shower it was is a motivated young woman, but not working in a field where language skills really matter. I knew about half the young people at the party personally, but not the others.

 

I think the most surprising thing for me was an older man in the first group who I don't think of as very smart or motivated, turned out to have a great vocabulary and grammar skills.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Reader's Digest just had an alarming article on the epidemic of cheating in colleges. I'm sure there are other articles out there too. Many of these degrees only show that these people had enough money to pay someone to write their essays including in some cases, doctorate theses.

[PiCO]

Reader's Digest just had an alarming article on the epidemic of cheating in colleges. I'm sure there are other articles out there too. Many of these degrees only show that these people had enough money to pay someone to write their essays including in some cases, doctorate theses.

 

How sad.

[PiCO]

Oh, girl, it's been longer than 10-15 years. It's one of the reasons over 25 years ago that I decided that my dc would never go to public school. Even then, there were articles in the newspaper (no Internet, you understand) pointing out that major corporations were holding classes in basic English because its college-educated employees couldn't read or write well. Pathetic.

 

You're right. I got a BS in education without the ability to write an organized essay. The only reason I can write reasonably well now is because by dh picked apart everything I wrote for my business promotional material. I was often in tears, and I told him to just write it himself. He said no, this was a skill I needed to have. I am very grateful. (I did have an extensive vocabulary though, and I could always read aloud.)

[Perry]

Here's why.

 

National Council of Teachers of English, 1985 resolution

 

1985 NCTE Annual Business Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Background

 

This resolution was prompted by the continuing use of repetitive grammar drills and exercises in the teaching of English in many schools. Proposers pointed out that ample evidence from 50 years of research has shown the teaching of grammar in isolation does not lead to improvement in students' speaking and writing, and that in fact, it hinders development of students' oral and written language. Be it therefore

Resolution

 

Resolved, that the National Council of Teachers of English affirm the position that the use of isolated grammar and usage exercises not supported by theory and research is a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing and that, in order to improve both of these, class time at all levels must be devoted to opportunities for meaningful listening, speaking, reading, and writing; and

that NCTE urge the discontinuance of testing practices that encourage the teaching of grammar rather than English language arts instruction.

[Perry]

Here's why.

 

National Council of Teachers of English, 1985 resolution

 

And here's a more thorough explanation:

 

The Naturalist Fallacy and the Demise of Grammar Instruction

[Just Robyn]

And here's a more thorough explanation:

 

The Naturalist Fallacy and the Demise of Grammar Instruction

 

I couldn't believe it the first time I read an article explaining this. I spent so many years lamenting the lack of grammar instruction in the local public schools (even when I was a student in said schools, I was upset that we weren't learning grammar). Then I went to college and got my undergrad and grad degrees in linguistics - the academic love of my life. Then I found out linguistics (due to a misunderstanding of it) was the origin of all my academic angst.

 

Sorry, if that got ot. I've been needing to unload that.

Edited May 22, 2011 by crstarlette

[Gooblink]

I went to a few gatherings this week. One was a business committee I serve on. The seven people on the committee range in age from 35 to 65, about half only had a high school education, the rest had degrees in education. We had to respond to a letter of complaint that was incredibly poorly written- riddled with spelling and gramatical errors, including using know for no, and "under minds" for undermines. There were about 25 errors in this one-page letter. (The author of the letter is 25 yrs old and is in law school.) All the committee members were appalled, but all responded in a professional manner to the complaints at hand.

 

Second gathering- a bridal shower for a 25-yo young woman with a master's degree. Friends also "well educated". These young women could not read aloud lists from the games, and did not know the meaning of many common words they were reading (one of the games was to make a list from A-Z of things that go with a wedding.)

 

So the first group was older people with high school educations or education degrees, the second group was young people with master's degrees. The first group of people just seemed so much better educated. What happened in education 10-15 years ago to cause this rift? These young people are considered well educated, and they are smart kids. Why is their vocabulary so limited? I am amazed.

 

And I know the public education system is currently failing us. I have spent thousand of dollars on "test prep" for my older daughter, and that is what has increased her vocabulary and taught her how to write an organized essay, not public school.

 

 

Wow. I don't know the answer...probably more than one factor. This reminds me, though, that a friend of mine just retired early from public school teaching - she's a middle-school english and mathematics teacher. She said this year fully 1/3 of 7th grade students entered her classroom unable to read.

 

This is not a troubled, inner-city school; it is in an "exemplary" school district.

 

Appalling.

[JessieC]

I think you can't discount the importance of life experience as we age. I used to teach college English, and the older, nontraditional college students were not necessarily perfect writers, but they had better vocabularies and more interesting things to say. It sounds like one group had more decades of living life under their belts. Most vocabulary we learn is incidental, through reading and conversing, not drummed into us in schools.

[Perry]

Most vocabulary we learn is incidental, through reading and conversing, not drummed into us in schools.

 

The texts used in schools have become much more simplified over time. It shouldn't be a surprise that vocabulary has declined as a result.

 

Schoolbook Simplification and Its Relation to the

Decline in SAT-Verbal Scores

 

In 1963, an abrupt, unexpected, and unprecedented 16-year decline In U. S. verbal achievement began

(Figure 1). Mean verbal scores fell from 478 to 424 in 1979. The early decline in scores was treated as a

regression effect—the 1963 mean had been an outlier, and consequently the next year’s score was merely a

return to normal. When scores continued to decline, the regression explanation was rejected and replaced

by the assumption that the declining scores were a statistical artifact—the verbal (and math) subtests

must have become harder. Modu and Stem (1977) tested this hypothesis and reported, to the contrary,

that the verbal tests had actually become easier in the decade 1963-1973, by 8 to 13 points. When scale

drift is combined with the official decline in scores, verbal achievement among American seniors nationwide

fell 59 to 64 points in little more tban one decade. By early 1960 standards, Stedman (1994) estimates

that students taking this test in the early 1990s were achieving at the 32nd percentile.

 

54 The policy of making schoolbooks more accessible by reducing their relative use of the uncommon and

rare English words and by shortening sentences may not have been cost-free after all. Our evidence establishes

beyond reasonable doubt that a major simplification of schoolbooks occurred after World War II

and that, beyond third grade, current levels have never been lower in American history. Any explanation

for the decline In SAT-verbal scores will now have to introduce statistical controls for this time series of

reader simplification.

[Aelwydd]

I couldn't say with any certainty why there are such differences between the two groups, without more information. I would caution against making any general assumptions about larger populations based upon such small sample groups. Anecdotal evidence is good for forming hypotheses and postulations, but is considered weak for the purposes of analyzing trends among large groups.

 

Personally, based on my own observations and subjective experience, I believe that a big reason for the decline in writing skills has to do more with a lack of critical thinking skills among most students. And the decline of critical thinking skills is largely due to the efforts of certain groups to discredit the underpinnings of the Enlightenment: reason, science, and philosophy.

[Tarreymere]

My DH works for our county human services office. Several of his co-workers have been sent to remedial english classes paid for by the county, all of them have college degrees.

[ElizabethB]

It is a deliberate dumbing down of vocabulary. It has to be dumbed down or whole language/balanced literacy instruction fails even more than it already has.

 

You can read a bit more about it on my webpage about Aliteracy, "Why Johnny Doesn't Like To Read," but the best quote about it is here, from Geraldine Rodgers' "History of Beginning Reading:"

 

Only about 3,000 of the highest frequency words compose about 98 per cent of almost any discourse. Words from the remaining half-million or so words in English normally compose the remaining two percent of any untreated, natural discourse. However, when written material is artificially simplified in the deliberate attempt to remove that two percent of low-frequency words, the harm that is being done to vocabulary development is hidden. It is usually not even suspected. Such vocabulary control is the real reason for the drop in test scores at the high school and college levels.

[cathmom]

This book - http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Our-Language-Multiculturalism-Undermines/dp/1893554481 was as eye-opening for reading and vocabulary as Liping Ma's book was for math IMO.

 

Our reading textbooks have been deliberately dumbed down.

[stripe]

By any chance do some of these well-educated people originally come from another country? I only mention it because I have noticed that with those whose first language is not English they sometimes struggle with grammar/spelling errors.

 

Just thought I'd see if that was a possibility.

Maybe, but I've only seen native English speakers confuse it's and it's, try to pluralize with an 's, or confuse they're/their.

[WishboneDawn]

I think you can't discount the importance of life experience as we age. I used to teach college English, and the older, nontraditional college students were not necessarily perfect writers, but they had better vocabularies and more interesting things to say. It sounds like one group had more decades of living life under their belts. Most vocabulary we learn is incidental, through reading and conversing, not drummed into us in schools.

 

Yup. I like this thought.

[twoforjoy]

I went to a few gatherings this week. One was a business committee I serve on. The seven people on the committee range in age from 35 to 65, about half only had a high school education, the rest had degrees in education. We had to respond to a letter of complaint that was incredibly poorly written- riddled with spelling and gramatical errors, including using know for no, and "under minds" for undermines. There were about 25 errors in this one-page letter. (The author of the letter is 25 yrs old and is in law school.) All the committee members were appalled, but all responded in a professional manner to the complaints at hand.

 

Second gathering- a bridal shower for a 25-yo young woman with a master's degree. Friends also "well educated". These young women could not read aloud lists from the games, and did not know the meaning of many common words they were reading (one of the games was to make a list from A-Z of things that go with a wedding.)

 

So the first group was older people with high school educations or education degrees, the second group was young people with master's degrees. The first group of people just seemed so much better educated. What happened in education 10-15 years ago to cause this rift? These young people are considered well educated, and they are smart kids. Why is their vocabulary so limited? I am amazed.

 

And I know the public education system is currently failing us. I have spent thousand of dollars on "test prep" for my older daughter, and that is what has increased her vocabulary and taught her how to write an organized essay, not public school.

 

Was there drinking at the bridal shower? That could explain it.

 

We had a baby shower for a friend when I was in grad school. One of our games was reading Ann Landers columns and providing advice. I don't recall anybody having any trouble reading or understanding anything.

 

I find this kind of thing very surprising. I teach writing classes at an inner city university. Even in my remedial classes, my students, for the most part, have no trouble with basic reading and comprehension skills, and many of them come from extremely low-performing public schools. So I find all of these stories of apparently well-educated young people who are unable to read quite foreign to my experience.

[Liz CA]

People read less high quality material if they read at all in this click here, click there driven world. I think one cannot underestimate the multi-dimensional value of reading; gaining information, learning from well written books phrases and grammar, expanding your vocabulary, just to name a few.

[twoforjoy]

Maybe, but I've only seen native English speakers confuse it's and it's, try to pluralize with an 's, or confuse they're/their.

 

Are they confusing them, or making careless errors? I certainly know the difference between those things, but have made those errors when typing quickly. (In fact, just now I wrote "I certainly no" on the first pass, and quickly corrected it, despite being fully aware of the difference between "no" and "know.")

 

Have you ever read an early draft by a very skilled author? A self-published book by somebody who you know is a competent author? They are often riddled with grammatical errors. It's not that the author is a poor writer or lacks knowledge of grammar, but that their objective in the first draft is to simply get ideas down.

 

One thing I think we fail to recognize is that there is a trade-off in communication: immediacy often comes at the expense of accuracy. We all accept this in speech. If you transcribe pretty much anybody's casual speech, it is riddled with all sorts of non-standard grammatical structures. But, we understand that they are communicating in a very spontaneous way, and accept it.

 

The thing is, I think, that today there is a lot more opportunity for immediate, spontaneous communication taking place in writing than there ever was in the past. Honestly, the only parallel I can think of to things like e-mail, IMs, texts, message boards, and Facebook are the notes we'd pass to our friends in junior high, and I really doubt those were testaments to grammatical mastery. You simply can't compare a blog post or status update or forum post by a young person today to a letter composed by somebody in the past. The blog post/status update/forum post is intended as a form of immediate, spontaneous communication in most cases, while the letter is not.

 

I do think we need to accept that whenever writing becomes more immediate and spontaneous, for most people it will also become less accurate/error-free. That's true today, and it was true a generation ago, and it was true four generations ago. Personally, I'm willing to make that trade-off. When I'm involved in a forum discussion somewhere, I'd rather get somebody's spontaneous, immediate response, than have them take the time to go through the kind of revision process that many people--no matter how knowledgeable about grammar or how well-schooled in phonics--must go through in order to produce error-free prose. I don't want to lose that spontaneous aspect of communication, any more than I'd want my friends to write out what they were going to say before they said it to me, lest they make an error when talking. But that is going to mean having to accept a higher level of errors than those of us who grew up reading very little writing that was spontaneous and casual are used to seeing.

[LibraryLover]

I just came away from a college graduation weekend observing and listening to lovely and intelligent young adults. I don't seem live in the same world as so many here.

 

I simply don't know what to make of this.

 

On another very personal level, I have one dear friend who is receiving a Master's degree in English from Harvard, and another who is getting a PhD in biology. These are very articulate and thoughtful folks.

Edited May 24, 2011 by LibraryLover

[OrganicAnn]

What common words did the 25 years olds not know? I think people continue to add to their knowledge and vocabulary through life, so that I would not be surprised that college educated 25 year olds might not know as much as well-read older people who do not have college educations.

 

So I want to know what the common words were.

[Stacy in NJ]

spoke directly to them or wrote. There was no other means of communication. Mass entertainment, technology, and media eliminated a great deal of the necessity to reading and writing.

 

Our language skill are poorly developed because we use them less frequently and/or less deeply. We read posts in internet chat forums, but do we read more complex texts that challenge and develop our skills?

 

Students watch the movie version of books, text, google, use Cliff's Notes, and cheat. It's not suprising that they aren't as literate as prior generations.

[twoforjoy]

It's not suprising that they aren't as literate as prior generations.

 

Is there actual, empirical evidence of this? Do we know for sure that young people today are less literate in some absolute sense than people in the past, using measures that compare like groups of people (i.e., not comparing college students from two generations ago to college students today, given the massive increase in the number of students in college)?

[Stacy in NJ]

information about the decrease in the verbal portion of the SAT.

 

 

Is there actual, empirical evidence of this? Do we know for sure that young people today are less literate in some absolute sense than people in the past, using measures that compare like groups of people (i.e., not comparing college students from two generations ago to college students today, given the massive increase in the number of students in college)?

[FO4UR]

I'm the first HSer in my family. Everyone has been quiet about it, but skeptical. My mom has been taking graduate level classes lately, and it is seeing/hearing her classmates flounder and botch the simplest tasks of communication that has turned her from "Eh, maybe the kids will survive this HSing thing and live to tell the tale. :001_huh:" to "Well, I'm not sure about socialization, but it makes academic sense." So...those educated illiterates have my sincere thanks!:tongue_smilie:

[twoforjoy]

information about the decrease in the verbal portion of the SAT.

 

Again, though, that's comparing apples to oranges. We've seen an extremely significant increase in the number of students taking the SAT. When only the best students were taking the SAT, of course we'd expect to see higher scores, and of course we'd expect to see scores drop as more and more students (which amounts to more and more lower-performing students) begin to take it.

 

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy appears to be the largest historical look at literacy in the U.S. that I can find, and it indicates that literacy rates have been steadily rising for over 120 years.

 

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

[Sevilla]

So the first group was older people with high school educations or education degrees, the second group was young people with master's degrees. The first group of people just seemed so much better educated. What happened in education 10-15 years ago to cause this rift? These young people are considered well educated, and they are smart kids. Why is their vocabulary so limited? I am amazed.

I have been wondering the same thing. I read about what a high school education required fifty years ago and it is so advanced compared to today. I notice this particularly in the reading levels that are expected out of middle schoolers and high schoolers. I notice the vocabulary differences too.

 

I don't know if there is just more information required so subjects are watered down to get to it all, if standardized testing has changed things, or if the teachers in the classroom today had poor educations themselves and don't have the tools themselves to pass those skills onto their students?

Edited May 24, 2011 by Sevilla

[twoforjoy]

I have been wondering the same thing. I read about what a high school education required fifty years ago and it is so advanced compared to today. I notice this particularly in the reading levels that are expected out of middle schoolers and high schoolers. I notice the vocabulary differences too.

 

Where did you read this? Because, honestly, all evidence I've seen indicates that the high school education the average person received 50 years ago was much less intensive and advanced, particularly in terms of math and science, than the average high school education today. Reading and writing instruction hasn't become much more intensive at the high school level, but it's certainly much more intensive in the lower grades today.

 

I don't know, I've noticed that a lot of times people who want to claim educational decline will compare the education the most privileged people in society received 50 or 100 years ago to the education the average person receives today. That's just not a fair or accurate comparison.

 

I think we need to consider that the average person today does far more public writing (and probably more writing, period, from all the stats I've seen) than the average person in the past. We now have ways to make anybody's writing public. So, of course it's going to look like writing skills have declined! For a very long time, we really only read the work of edited, published authors, and maybe the occasional proofread memo or letter. It seems to me that the massive increase in the amount of writing out there for us to read, most of it in contexts where immediacy is privileged over accuracy, is going to skew perceptions a great deal, but doesn't indicate anything about actual skill levels.

Edited May 24, 2011 by twoforjoy

[FO4UR]

Again, though, that's comparing apples to oranges. We've seen an extremely significant increase in the number of students taking the SAT. When only the best students were taking the SAT, of course we'd expect to see higher scores, and of course we'd expect to see scores drop as more and more students (which amounts to more and more lower-performing students) begin to take it.

 

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy appears to be the largest historical look at literacy in the U.S. that I can find, and it indicates that literacy rates have been steadily rising for over 120 years.

 

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

 

The last year on that look at literacy was 1979. I was born in 1979. Things have changed quite a bit since then. I actually learned phonics in K-2nd grades. Just a few years behind me, that changed. I know people who still can't read.

 

Personally, I've seen enough anecdotal evidence from people irl that I will do what it takes to educate my own dc...b/c it's a gamble leaving it up to the ps system.

[twoforjoy]

The last year on that look at literacy was 1979. I was born in 1979. Things have changed quite a bit since then. I actually learned phonics in K-2nd grades. Just a few years behind me, that changed. I know people who still can't read.

 

If you were born in 1979, you actually should have learned to read in the era when whole language was supposedly all that was being taught, since you'd have been in elementary school in the 1980s, the heyday of whole language. The fact that you were taught phonics even then shows that phonics never really disappeared from our public schools the way we are sometimes led to believe.

 

There was a very brief period of time where phonics fell out of favor in some districts; since at least the mid-1990s, though, phonics has been taught in nearly all public school classrooms. Whole language instruction began in the 1970s, and I think you'd probably have found far more whole language classrooms then than in the 1990s.

 

I've seen no evidence that actual literacy rates have declined, much less declined significantly, since 1979. Certainly the rates of functional illiteracy are higher than they should be, but we don't really know what the rates of functional illiteracy were in the past, because nobody measured them. Literacy wasn't based on whether you could read well enough to function in modern society, but whether you could read, period. So, comparing rates of functional literacy today to rates of literacy in the past is another apples-to-oranges comparison.

 

I guess I don't see why we can't acknowledge that the public schools are, for the most part, turning out students who are no less literate than in the past and still feel that homeschooling is the right choice for our families and our children.

[FO4UR]

 

I don't know, I've noticed that a lot of times people who want to claim educational decline will compare the education the most privileged people in society received 50 or 100 years ago to the education the average person receives today. That's just not a fair or accurate comparison.

 

 

 

HA!

 

My grandparents were educated in one-room school houses in the sticks of Kentucky. (bluegrass, banjo, fiddle...ahhh...cornbread and beans...yummm!) They were better educated than any ONE of their many grandchildren, and every single one of their grandchildren (who are of the age) have some sort of college degree.

 

Purely anecdotal, but I simply don't SEE any evidence in the midst of people I know that education has improved. There is more math and science to learn, but that doesn't mean that kids are actually learning it. My grandma has better mental math skills than any of us grandkids. I may have passed calc, but grandma can actually balance her checkbook.:tongue_smilie:

[LibraryLover]

? The article sited has more recent data than that.

 

 

The last year on that look at literacy was 1979. I was born in 1979. Things have changed quite a bit since then. I actually learned phonics in K-2nd grades. Just a few years behind me, that changed. I know people who still can't read.

 

Personally, I've seen enough anecdotal evidence from people irl that I will do what it takes to educate my own dc...b/c it's a gamble leaving it up to the ps system.

[LibraryLover]

Folks here are very invested in non-homeschoolers being thoroughly ignorant.

 

I do not understand that sweeping attitude at all, although given that so many posters here are not what I would call the most excellent communciators, I can see that some schools have not been able to teach the most basic skills. (Although my theory is that dyslexia and other processing disorders are more rampant than autism.)

 

I have learned to avert my eyes to all of the alots, there's, Mom's, cat's, and more. My hope is that hsing parents can learn along with their children.

 

what the rates of functional illiteracy were in the past, because nobody measured them. Literacy wasn't based on whether you could read well enough to function in modern society, but whether you could read, period. So, comparing rates of functional literacy today to rates of literacy in the past is another apples-to-oranges comparison.

 

I guess I don't see why we can't acknowledge that the public schools are, for the most part, turning out students who are no less literate than in the past and still feel that homeschooling is the right choice for our families and our children.

Edited May 24, 2011 by LibraryLover

[twoforjoy]

HA!

 

My grandparents were educated in one-room school houses in the sticks of Kentucky. (bluegrass, banjo, fiddle...ahhh...cornbread and beans...yummm!) They were better educated than any ONE of their many grandchildren, and every single one of their grandchildren (who are of the age) have some sort of college degree.

 

Purely anecdotal, but I simply don't SEE any evidence in the midst of people I know that education has improved. There is more math and science to learn, but that doesn't mean that kids are actually learning it. My grandma has better mental math skills than any of us grandkids. I may have passed calc, but grandma can actually balance her checkbook.:tongue_smilie:

 

My grandmother did a great job balancing her checkbook, too, but my father was in charge of editing her Christmas letter every year, and her grammar was atrocious. She just didn't really write much except for some personal letters to friends, that obviously weren't for public consumption, and her annual Christmas letter which was edited and proofread by somebody else before it was sent out.

 

My father's father only had a seventh grade education, and never read a book the entire time my father knew him. My father's mother did read, and was quite literate, but she was the valedictorian of her class, so she wasn't exactly average; she had to take care of her siblings after her mother died when she was 16, so she never got to further her education past high school, but she absolutely could have and is one of the smartest people I've ever known. My mother's father went to college, but he pretty much never wrote, and only read sports biographies as far as anybody could tell.

 

Both my MIL and FIL, who have high school diplomas and were educated in the 1950s, are terrible writers. They can't manage a one-sentence FB comment or e-mail without a few grammatical or spelling errors, and that's pretty much the only writing either does.

 

My father is a very good writer, but he has a degree in English and a graduate degree, and likes to write (never-to-be-published) novels in his spare time, so I wouldn't really consider his writing ability representative of everybody in his generation.

 

Anecdotally, most of the young people I know are better writers than the older people I know, and write and read more than older people do.

Edited May 24, 2011 by twoforjoy

[ElizabethB]

 

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

 

Pre-1979 data is from other sources, not the NAAL, and uses different reporting criteria.

 

From Wayne E. Fuller's "One-Room Schools of the Middle West," page 77

 

 

It was surely more that coincidental that as the number of Midwestern one-room schools soared, the area’s illiteracy rate declined. In 1890, the people of the Midwest (North Central Division) eclipsed the North Atlantic Division to become the most literate in the nation. It was a position they held at least until 1930, when illiteracy rates were dropped with the census.

 

Perhaps it was significant, too, that in 1900 the rural states of Nebraska and Iowa (the latter with the most one-room schools in the nation after Illinois) had the highest percentages of literate people ten years of age and older. Kansas, with a majority of its children in one-room schools, followed close behind.

 

He has a bunch of interesting data in his book...basically, the schools actually got worse with consolidation into larger districts although the opposite was promised.

 

From my History of Reading Instruction page, the links in the original on the page link to the actual Rice study available to view on Google books:

 

1893 - 1896: In a survey of Public Schools throughout the United States in 1883, Joseph Rice found that phonics led to better results in reading than word methods. [15] In 1895 and 1896, he gave spelling tests to 33,000 children throughout the United States. He found that the best spelling results were obtained where the phonic method was used. [16]

 

There is more long term historical evidence for spelling than reading, the exact same words were given in the exact same manner in Iowa spelling tests of 1922 and again in 1953, there was a decline of 2 grade levels from 1922 to 1953 after the introduction of whole language teaching. The 1950 data are proprietary, but you can get a copy of the book and compare, I own the 1953 book and have done a statistical analysis. You can also just look at the Ayers spelling scores and the words spelled (and these were produced, not picked on a multiple choice test) in 1914 and 1915 and the words spelled in 1922 and see that there was a much higher level of spelling ability back then than today. Spelling is highly correlated with literacy. It is possible to be a good reader and a poor speller, but the majority of good spellers are also good readers.

 

You can see the spelling links here on my spelling test page:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Spelling/spellingtests.html

 

(With links to the Ayers spelling study and the 1922 study. The 1922 study is a book that details how and to who the words were given. The 1950 book has the same details and was a replication of the earlier study, using the exact same procedures.)

[FO4UR]

If you were born in 1979, you actually should have learned to read in the era when whole language was supposedly all that was being taught, since you'd have been in elementary school in the 1980s, the heyday of whole language. The fact that you were taught phonics even then shows that phonics never really disappeared from our public schools the way we are sometimes led to believe.

 

There was a very brief period of time where phonics fell out of favor in some districts; since at least the mid-1990s, though, phonics has been taught in nearly all public school classrooms. Whole language instruction began in the 1970s, and I think you'd probably have found far more whole language classrooms then than in the 1990s.

 

I've seen no evidence that actual literacy rates have declined, much less declined significantly, since 1979. Certainly the rates of functional illiteracy are higher than they should be, but we don't really know what the rates of functional illiteracy were in the past, because nobody measured them. Literacy wasn't based on whether you could read well enough to function in modern society, but whether you could read, period. So, comparing rates of functional literacy today to rates of literacy in the past is another apples-to-oranges comparison.

 

I guess I don't see why we can't acknowledge that the public schools are, for the most part, turning out students who are no less literate than in the past and still feel that homeschooling is the right choice for our families and our children.

 

 

The last little paragraph makes me chuckle. I don't need to demonize ps's to *feel* that HSing is the right choice for my family!:001_rolleyes:

 

I've seen no evidence that ps can offer my dc a better education that what I can do at home. When it comes to my *feelings,* I don't give a hoot what the literacy trends are nation-wide. I care about the literacy trends in my living room.

 

Before acknowledging that "the public schools are, for the most part, turning out students who are no less literate than in the past" I need to see evidence...and that has nothing to do with my feelings.

 

The evidence I've seen looks grim for the USA ps system...all anecdotal, of course.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

I have all anecdotal evidence as well, but my publicly schooled 9th and 11th grade niece and nephew frequently comment that my 6 and 8 year old kids have better vocabularies than they do.

 

Dh and I had dinner with a lawyer friend of his and her husband. They have kids around the same ages as ours. We were discussing bedtime routines, and I said, "My kids still like to read picture books in addition to the chapter books we usually read." Lawyer woman said, "What are picture books?" I said, "You know, just the regular kid books with the pictures on every page." She said, "Oh." She was publicly educated.

 

I worked at a law firm and was appalled at the lack of spelling and grammar knowledge of the young attorneys and law clerks, so your shower story doesn't surprise me.

 

I taught French 102 at a state university, where most of the students came from our public high schools. None of them could ever identify a part of speech. Only one grad student from New Zealand could tell me what a noun was. No one could tell me the difference between a clause and a phrase. I'm pretty sure no one knew what the word "modify" meant, either, as I had to explain it when talking about adverbs and adjectives. It was quite sad.

[Perry]

Again, though, that's comparing apples to oranges.

This is addressed at the link.

 

1 The 1963—1979 decline in SAT-verbal achievement provoked many explanations; it was due to changes in

family birth order, teacher abilities, school resources, curriculum, student composition, youth cultures,

discipline problems, achievement motivation, nutrition, television, and lead poisoning. Some (e.g., the

confluence theory, Zajonc & Bargh, 1980) had seemed plausible at one point, but they no longer fit the

growing time series. The most widely accepted of the surviving explanations is that the decline was caused

by changes in the composition of those taking the test. After 25 years of speculation and analysis, a scientifically

adequate explanation for this decline continues to be elusive.

2 In 1963, an abrupt, unexpected, and unprecedented 16-year decline In U. S. verbal achievement began

(Figure 1). Mean verbal scores fell from 478 to 424 in 1979. The early decline in scores was treated as a

regression effect—the 1963 mean had been an outlier, and consequently the next year’s score was merely a

return to normal. When scores continued to decline, the regression explanation was rejected and replaced

by the assumption that the declining scores were a statistical artifact—the verbal (and math) subtests

must have become harder. Modu and Stem (1977) tested this hypothesis and reported, to the contrary,

that the verbal tests had actually become easier in the decade 1963-1973, by 8 to 13 points. When scale

drift is combined with the official decline in scores, verbal achievement among American seniors nationwide

fell 59 to 64 points in little more tban one decade. By early 1960 standards, Stedman (1994) estimates

that students taking this test in the early 1990s were achieving at the 32nd percentile.

3 By this time, the explanation focusing on changes in the composition of the test-takers became more plausible.

Between 1952 and 1963, the fraction of 17- and 18-years-olds remaining in school increased, as did

the fraction of seniors taking the SAT. From being a test required for admission to select colleges only, the

test was now serving a far wider range of colleges. That presumably diluted the talent pool, causing the

mean score to fall.

 

We have identified three inconsistencies between this composition explanation and the evidence.The first

is that SAT verbal scores should have declined during the 1952—1963 period because that was when the

composition of the test-takers was changing most (from about 5 to over 50% of the senior cohort). To the

contrary, ETS reported that scores fluctuated within a narrow range—between 472 and 478. While the

average test-taker became less elite (academically) and more diverse in class, race and ethnic background,

mean verbal scores did not fall.

5 The second inconsistency concerns the prediction that when the changes in test-taker composition

slowed, in the 1963-1979 period, mean verbal scores should have leveled off and remained relatively stable.

Throughout this period, the fraction of the senior cohort taking this test was stable at just over 50%. it

was in this period that verbal scores fell from a high of 478 to 424 (just 2 points above its lowest level ever,

422, recorded in 1991). That is, virtually the entire change in post-World War II American verbal achievement

levels — from an initial high plateau of about 475 in the 1950-early 1960s to a much lower plateau of

scores from 1979 through 1994 — occurred within this single 16-year period.

6 The third inconsistency between the evidence and the composition explanation stems from its assumption

that as more lower scoring students took this test, the fraction scoring over 600 and 700 would necessarily

decline (so long as top students continued to take the test). The absolute numbers of students

scoring over 600 should have remained about the same.

7 The evidence is different: The entire distribution of verbal scores from top to bottom, shifted to lower levels.

There was not only a proportional decline in top scorers but an absolute decline in the number scoring

over 600. There are now 35% fewer scoring over 600. The number scoring over 700 fell from 17,500 in

1972 to just over 10,000 in 1993 — even as the number taking this test grew (Shea, 1993). Highly selective

colleges and universities report mean verbal declines on the order of 40 points. The composition hypothesis

does not predict this outcome. An acceptable explanation for the SAT-verbal decline must account for

this huge decline in the performance of the academic elite.

8 Evidence for the composition hypothesis is based primarily on multivariate analyses of academic and

demographic data which has become available only since 1976. Consequently, those analyses excluded (a)

the first 13 years of the mean verbal decline (when scores fell nearly 50 points — 478 in 1962-1963 to 429)

and (b) the scale drift of 8 to 13 points between 1963 and 1973 (Austin & Garber, 1982; Carson, Huelskamp,

& Woodall, 1993; Murray & Herrnstein, 1992; Stedman, 1994). This hypothesis extrapolates from

these analyses (which have less than 1/6th the range of variation) to an earlier period in which virtually all

of the change from a high, relatively stable plateau to a low, relatively stable plateau of verbal achievement

had already occurred.

9 In an effort to control important cognitive and demographic changes in test-taker composition, Bracey

(1991) analyzed only White test-takers with one or more college-educated parent. Those in the SAT norming

population of 1941 had a mean verbal score of 500, while their modern counterparts scored 454,

implying that this decline was real, not an artifact. His most important finding for our analysis, however,

was the discovery that the two sets of White students (separated by 50 years) had comparable SAT-math

scores, suggesting that factors unique to verbal achievement caused the verbal scores to fall. It is unlikely

that compositional change alone will be able to explain the differentials in the math and verbal times

series.

[asta]

 

I do think we need to accept that whenever writing becomes more immediate and spontaneous, for most people it will also become less accurate/error-free. That's true today, and it was true a generation ago, and it was true four generations ago. Personally, I'm willing to make that trade-off. When I'm involved in a forum discussion somewhere, I'd rather get somebody's spontaneous, immediate response, than have them take the time to go through the kind of revision process that many people--no matter how knowledgeable about grammar or how well-schooled in phonics--must go through in order to produce error-free prose. I don't want to lose that spontaneous aspect of communication, any more than I'd want my friends to write out what they were going to say before they said it to me, lest they make an error when talking. But that is going to mean having to accept a higher level of errors than those of us who grew up reading very little writing that was spontaneous and casual are used to seeing.

 

I guess that's the difference for some of us: I'm not willing to make that trade off. I see "I can haz grammer" as a joke within a properly formed piece of communication, not as a means of communication.

 

There are so many slippery slopes in the world... why add one more? Especially one as important as clear communication?

 

 

asta

 

(who wishes the edit button never disappeared, just so inadvertent errors due to sleepiness and cats walking across keyboards could always be fixed)

Edited May 24, 2011 by asta

[asta]

Folks here are very invested in non-homeschoolers being thoroughly ignorant.

 

I do not understand that sweeping attitude at all, although given that so many posters here are not what I would call the most excellent communciators, I can see that some schools have not been able to teach the most basic skills. (Although my theory is that dyslexia and other processing disorders are more rampant than autism.)

 

I have learned to avert my eyes to all of the alots, there's, Mom's, cat's, and more. My hope is that hsing parents can learn along with their children.

 

:iagree:

[LibraryLover]

But you are doing just that with anecdote. You can have your 'feelings', but they are not data.

 

I can recognize that some schools are doing a terrible job, but I can also recognize that some schools are doing an amazinging job, especially given the scope, size, and problems we have as a nation.

 

Your reasons for hsing are fine...I have my own reasons for hsing, but that doesn't mean I just didn't come home from hearing 20 AP Art kids at the local public school give articulate and wonderful presenataions about their work. They were talking line, angle, persepctive, saturated color, imagery, about being inspired by Carvaggio, Georgia O'keefe, Dorothea Lang etc. I simply can't find a way to put that down, no matter how I might try. (One girl did do that annoying 'make every statement a question' thing that drives me nuts. "My work evolved over the course of the year? I found I enjoy working with acrylics? Prior to this semester acrylics had been intimidating to me?" )

 

Daily, weekly, I see fine and bright young people...and I am glad of it. It doesn't mean I am going to stop hsing. My anecdotes about articulate public school students doesn't represent all students, but neither do the anecdotes about ignorance represent all students. Yet people seem so cock-sure with their own party anecdotes.

 

The last little paragraph makes me chuckle. I don't need to demonize ps's to *feel* that HSing is the right choice for my family!:001_rolleyes:

 

I've seen no evidence that ps can offer my dc a better education that what I can do at home. When it comes to my *feelings,* I don't give a hoot what the literacy trends are nation-wide. I care about the literacy trends in my living room.

 

Before acknowledging that "the public schools are, for the most part, turning out students who are no less literate than in the past" I need to see evidence...and that has nothing to do with my feelings.

 

The evidence I've seen looks grim for the USA ps system...all anecdotal, of course.

Edited May 24, 2011 by LibraryLover

[LibraryLover]

I often refer to these as illustrated books, although I do know what picture books are. However, I think this is a ridiculous example.

 

I am also not sure the majority of hsers are going to be able to do better than some schools, especially at the high school level, given some of the issues I've seen here with writing, spelling, grammar etc. (I am speaking beyond typos or dashed-off thoughts too late at night. I am talking foundational skills.)

 

 

I

 

Dh and I had dinner with a lawyer friend of his and her husband. They have kids around the same ages as ours. We were discussing bedtime routines, and I said, "My kids still like to read picture books in addition to the chapter books we usually read." Lawyer woman said, "What are picture books?" I said, "You know, just the regular kid books with the pictures on every page." She said, "Oh." She was publicly educated.

 

 

QUOTE]

Edited May 24, 2011 by LibraryLover

[Mejane]

On the subject of drilling grammar, we did not/do not do that. I teach grammar within the context of writing by discussing and fixing errors. It sticks better with my kids, and both have turned into good writers relative to their levels. Of course, the point is that we do write. We also read. I'm appalled by ds's friend's description of what passes for reading and writing in our local top-rated high school. It's no wonder at all to me that these kids can't write.

[Jen500]

I often refer to these as illustrated books, although I do know what picture books are. However, I think this is a ridiculous example.

 

 

 

:iagree:

 

And I had never heard of the term 'chapter book' until my dc started asking for chapter books while attending ps. I discovered that I had been reading chapter books for many years! :lol:

[Punchie]

People read less high quality material if they read at all in this click here, click there driven world. I think one cannot underestimate the multi-dimensional value of reading; gaining information, learning from well written books phrases and grammar, expanding your vocabulary, just to name a few.

 

I believe this. My vocabulary is not as large as it was when I was in high school or college, mainly b/c I had to read extensively.

 

On a side, one of my sister's previous professors read tons of letters written in the 1920's by inmates for her thesis. So, I'm assuming that none of these guys were educated beyond the 8th grade. The professor was shocked at the vocabulary and eloquence of the letters. Written by criminals. One of her comments about this was that very few averagely educated ppl today would be able to write with such skill.