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Askville: Spelling & Grammar
This question was obviously inspired by the "lovee" question I wrote about a minute ago.
"Is anyone else concerned with how today's youth can't spell and don't know grammar or simple capitalization/punctuation?"
The problem is our educational system and our culture. Television bears a large share of the blame, for sure. So do parents...and, I suspect, the popularity of divorce (although I think that's probably a reflection of the decay of our culture as a whole).
America has been a bastion of anti-intellectualism for many decades now. That's ironic, when you consider that we were founded by intellectuals - brilliant men, all of them.
As far as eduction goes, I suspect that a key element of the problem is school funding. It's profoundly unfair for school funding to be based on local property taxes, as it so often is. It virtually guarantees that the children of the poor will receive inferior educations, and that goes against the whole idea of fairness in America. True, an exceptional teacher or administrator can sometimes provide a great education to students even with very few resources - but that's the exception, not the rule.
Level funding for all schools should be mandatory, and it should NOT be based on the wealth of the specific community. Every American should receive the best education possible.
I have to admit that on World of Warcraft, it bugs me when almost everyone uses textspeak. Even things like saying "grats" instead of "Congratulations!" annoy me. So I make a particular effort to use proper English.
Of course, that sometimes means that I stand there and let my companions get killed while I'm typing...no, I'm kidding, I wait for the right moment and I type pretty fast.
"Is anyone else concerned with how today's youth can't spell and don't know grammar or simple capitalization/punctuation?"
The problem is our educational system and our culture. Television bears a large share of the blame, for sure. So do parents...and, I suspect, the popularity of divorce (although I think that's probably a reflection of the decay of our culture as a whole).
America has been a bastion of anti-intellectualism for many decades now. That's ironic, when you consider that we were founded by intellectuals - brilliant men, all of them.
As far as eduction goes, I suspect that a key element of the problem is school funding. It's profoundly unfair for school funding to be based on local property taxes, as it so often is. It virtually guarantees that the children of the poor will receive inferior educations, and that goes against the whole idea of fairness in America. True, an exceptional teacher or administrator can sometimes provide a great education to students even with very few resources - but that's the exception, not the rule.
Level funding for all schools should be mandatory, and it should NOT be based on the wealth of the specific community. Every American should receive the best education possible.
I have to admit that on World of Warcraft, it bugs me when almost everyone uses textspeak. Even things like saying "grats" instead of "Congratulations!" annoy me. So I make a particular effort to use proper English.
Of course, that sometimes means that I stand there and let my companions get killed while I'm typing...no, I'm kidding, I wait for the right moment and I type pretty fast.