Illiterates to Mars

[Bruno Ogorelec]

OK, maybe it is not mine to say so, but I cannot remain silent anymore; I am shocked too strongly for that. Condemn me if you will but someone has to tell you this in your face. Better to have a friend tell you this. The enemy will snicker quietly.

Has the American nation really forgot its language? Are you really not ashamed that one young man in two in your country is seemingly unable to spell and does not even have the basic understanding of grammar?

Where is the once proud United States going? Do you really think you can get to Mars by being illiterate? Or, if you can, that it will be worth it? There's Mars to be conquered in your own back yard but you can't even see it.

To an outside observer, the US sure looks like having its order of priorities seriously and sadly jumbled. Worst of all, no one seems to be worried about it.

For give me for this; I just had to blurt it out.

[JetSet]

I thought this was very strange too. I was talking to someone about going to mars the other day; who said the whole 'conquer mars' thing was dreamed up by people who dont really know what is going on (in terms of science etc). If left to NASA, they would probably do a decent job on the ISS before taking on anything else this major. As it stands at the moment (according to the news), NASA may not be shipping up a few chunks of the IIS, in order to focus on mars (even less flights now scheduled due to recent happenings).

I'm sure NASA know what they are doing

[El-Kablooey]

Totally agree, Bruno. I laugh to myself constantly seeing people's spelling errors. I shouldn't laugh though, because it isn't funny at all. America's public education system is a big joke. The big kicker is that every student in America is required to take English classes every year of high school, how do they ever graduate without having a grasp of at least simple grammar? I got a giggle just a few hours earlier today, when visiting a local auto manufacturing company to check out a complaint about a part the company I work for makes. I witnessed a supervisor writing on the windshield of a car "Goe's to chassy prep".

[Al Belli]

It is unfortunate that education and intelligence do not equate in this era.
Having been associated with Penn State U. as an adult continuing education instructor, I witnessed, first hand, the current state of an institution of " higher education ". The administratore are interested only in retaining their jobs, and put forth minimal effort to improve the educational process. Any suggestion of change is met with abject terror.
The attitude is: Why change a system that works ?
The system " works " only for the administration, tenured faculty, and the subcontractors; NOT FOR THE STUDENTS !!!!!

The general population has no respect for intelligence, and derides those individuals that exhibit any glimmer of intelligence. Most of todays role models are dysfunctional semi-illiterates who have become overpromoted by the media.

The supervisor in the above post is probably grossly overpaid for the work that he performs. I have begun to use the word " stupidvisor " in My vocabulary, after having suffered under several during my career.

When I was a tool & die instructor, the machine shop owners were constantly moaning about not being able to find any good help. I asked them when they had their last apprenticeship training program.
Their answer was that when business is booming, they could not have a journeyman " wasting " his time on an apprentice. When business was slow, they had no money for training. The point was academic since the apprentice level employees were the first to experience layoffs.
I asked the shop owners, " where do you expect the new lot of machinists to come from since you are not training them ? "

No one had an answer for me, and they seemed to think that i was a "smartass " for even suggesting that they were the root cause of their problem.

To this type of thinking, I usually relate Walt Kelly's line in " Pogo " where Pogo observes that " we have seen the enemy, and it is us ".

This does not work, however, since most people ( like vampires ! ) do not see any reflection when they " look in the mirror ".

Sorry for the extended rant, but I am utterly frustrated with the current state- of- affairs in our society.

It is unfortunate, but I cannot offer a " politically correct " solution for the mess that we are in.

" You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs "

Al Belli

[ed knesl]

Bruno,

There is a reason for all that !!
Dumbing down the masses always work well for power elite.
It is hard to control smart and educated people.

Do you remember from history at Old Rome they gave to the plebs
"Bread and Games". It worked well for quite long time, then the empire
collapsed from all that decadence.

Good Old US of A. follows the same pattern and the results are qute predictable. Power Elite will not be affected since it operates in
multinational arena. It is going to be OK somewhere else for a while.

Constitutional and Educated USA is in a way for the New World Order.
Unfortunately EU will follow the same "Guideline" sooner or later.
( If it survives the start up period )

[pezman]

Well, English orthography is a nightmare, owing to the large number of
borrowed words and the need to approximate them with only 26 borrowed letters -- you get rules like "'I' before 'E' except after 'C' or when in long 'A' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh' with certain exceptions such as 'ceiling' or 'their' (the latter possibly being subject to the long A rule at one point in time) ..." -- you get the idea. I have heard that English is one of the few languages where spelling contests are interesting.

English grammar is similarly tricky -- with the general rules being relatively simple and uninflected, but strewn with exceptions. Even at this point in my life, I still learn the occasional new English grammar rule.

One of the classic anecdotes in our family is a story in which, at the age of three, I apparently uttered a sentence in the "subjunctive of supposition" mood within earshot of an English professor. I'm sure I was just parroting my parents -- I'll bet I was 40 before I knew what the subjunctive mood was, but apparently I could mimic it successfully at the age of three. At any rate, he thought this was remarkable and made some hand-wringing proclamations about the sorry state of college students at least half of whom (according to him) couldn't formulate a grammatically correct sentence in the subjunctive mood – so it seems that we’ve been in this tailspin for decades. In that period, we've sent folks to the moon, created Space Shuttles (and blew a few up), created the Internet etc. Of course, we've done our fair share of dumb stuff as a nation in the interim as well. Yet somehow we’ve managed to recover from several rather dark episodes over those years.

I guess that my point is this: whether we are in the midst of a genuine decline of the English language and/or a general decline of the U.S. is an open question that only history will decide. As a child of the liberal elite, I like to wring my hands as much as the next tree hugger about all kinds of problems (real and perceived), but I also am aware that many of my concerns may be misplaced, and that my ideas on how best to “fixâ€

[skyfrog]

OK, I will try my best to minimize the grammar error in this post. :) I know Bruno was not talking about us, who doesn't have English as he/she's first language.

Our languages (Mandarin/Taiwanese) have no obvious grammar to follow. It end up when we are writing sentences in English, we have to organize the sentence by trial first, then do grammar check, using our limited knowledge in grammar. When come back a few days and read it again, we could still find some bugs in the sentences. Really hard. I hope people in here could tolerate our broken English, or Tailish.

[Bruno Ogorelec]

I'll be the first to admit that I live in a very strange country that is simultaneously wonderful and terrible (snip) Of course, only time will settle debates on this topic and I am certain that the U.S.’ time in the sun will pass, but I’m equally sure that no one really knows when that time will come.

Good and interesting points, Pezman. You are right, the decline has been going on for a while, but it need not mean that the fall with not come. Rome did not decline and fall in week, either. Took a long time to die.

Maybe the usual social stratification in the West is truly switching into geographical stratification. Instead of discrete social groups performing certain tasks, we may be moving towards nations and areas specializing in them. Maybe we'll have banking nations, industrial nations, etc. Sex nations (look at Thailand). Globalization makes it possible.

The US will be the Nation of Entertainment and Litigation. (Sorry about this; couldn't resist.)

[Bruno Ogorelec]

http://www.livejournal.com/community/ac ... 36660.html

It's is a bit of a tangent, but the reasoning is the same. Twenty years ago, what exposure did you have to average merkins to be able to quantify their spelling ability?

You are right in general. However, in my particular case, I have had more or less constant and extensive exposure to US citizens since 1972. I have been friends with them, worked for them, sold them stuff, bought stuff from them, guided them on tours, visited the US twice etc. I think I have a pretty good picture stretching over a long time.

Ed is right; it is spreading to Europe, too. Germany in particular has seen a frightening decline in standards. Japan, ditto. I won't even mention my own country, which has recently seen a violent upheaval that bludgeoned the standards in an even worse way.

Liberal democracy of the American kind is such a comfortable and pleasant thing to have, but maybe it's just not the thing people need if they want to stay sharp.

But, maybe I'm just paranoid.

[pezman]

The US will be the Nation of Entertainment and Litigation. (Sorry about this; couldn't resist.)

Actually, the U.S. entertainment industry, legal system, press and politics all seem to be hopelessly intertwined, so no point in itemizing ...

[larry cottrill]

Has the American nation really forgot its language?

Yes, we have.

Are you really not ashamed that one young man in two in your country is seemingly unable to spell and does not even have the basic understanding of grammar?

The people of the US have forgotten how to be ashamed of anything, with the notable exceptions of "intolerance" (meaning the unwillingness to fully embrace any belief or practice no matter how socially detrimental or logically absurd) and the exploitation of nature (meaning making a living in any way other than organic gardening). Lack of appropriate shame is our No. 1 problem - far more important than our level of literacy.

And then, there is "Kipling's Curse On the American Language". Rudyard Kipling was shocked to find that by the late 1800s, his masterful works had been plagiarized by many unscrupulous US printers. He retaliated by pronouncing a great curse on "the American language", wherein he prophesied that our "English" would become a confused blather of words, phrases and epithets from all over the world. Sure enough, it worked.

However, I enjoy the color, variety and vitality of "American English". The problem is, it is no longer taught in public schools in any meaningful way. Even the rudiments of spelling are given total disregard - the National Spelling Bee is always won by home-schooled children now. Grammar and the basics of English sentence structure are ignored completely. Such topics are considered not "creative" enough to have time taken up in the classroom. We still have some good teachers, but public education as a whole has been rotted from the foundations upward.

Some of my favorite language faux pas in present common usage are: The use of "he and I" when "him and me" is needed, and vice versa; the hideous and all-pervasive "is comprised of" (I have seen that in corporate memos so often I could almost scream my disgust), and the misuse of "hopefully" (I'm sometimes guilty of that one myself - hopefully, not too often).

And, always remember what Churchill said: "A preposition is a very poor word to end a sentence with."

L Cottrill

[pezman]

I thought that there was evidence that Curhchill chafed at that particular grammar rule.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html

However, that said, the rule on prepositions is one to which I generally conform.

[larry cottrill]

pezman -

Read the quote again and you'll note that his saying IS a good-humored indication that he indeed "chafed at the rule".

This particular quote has often mistakenly been re-written as: "A preposition is a very poor word with which to end a sentence," thus totally destroying the humorous effect of what he actually said.

L Cottrill

[Hank]

Well, I've read the initial castigation and the examples. I would read from you some thoughts on reasons why and solution.
Regards, Hank

Al, Do you actually believe that some of the Tool & Die people you've dealt with would actually want to get their workforce competent enough to be the competition?

[Al Belli]

Hi Hank,

I have seen many machinists set up a few machines at home and become self employed, and i often wonder why anyone competant would want to stay in the shops . I, for one, always produced far above expectation; and finally became frustrated with the lack of appreciation shown by the " stupidvisors ". I was given the most difficult jobs, and enjoyed the challanges presented. Now the shop mentality has been lowered to the use of " red and green button pushers ", most of whom could not choose a method, tool or speed and feed, needed to do a job. When a problem arises, the operator is either unaware of it, or has to get the set-up man to fix it. Management moans about quality improvement and reduction of scrapped parts, but fails to understand that the average employee has no idea how to make any improvements, and most have no desire to learn anything about the process.
If the shop owners treated their skilled employees as such, they might be pleasantly surprised at how helpful their suggestions can be. The relationship between management and worker need not be adverserial.

Al Belli