<p>I was just thinking about this question the other day. </p>
<p>Given that:
We consume a lot more television, video games, and other forms of visual media
We don’t read that many books
We write and receive fewer letters.
Many of us rely on texting as our primary means of communication
Fewer people seem to be interested in classical/canonical books…and many of our youth seem disconnected/apathetic about the past
Certain elements of our society celebrate anti-intellectualism; these elements seem to be getting more media attention</p>
<p>Give all this–Do you suppose that, overall, we write worse than our predecessors? In other words, has writing declined?</p>
<p>Of course, I realize that more people are writing than ever before, which too has to be taken into consideration…
…But I also wonder if, as a whole, we are less literate than our forebearers</p>
<p>I was a substitute teacher for several years, and I was appalled at the poor writing skills demonstrated by the high school students. There was a lot of emphasis on writing in the school district. However, there did not seem to be a lot of emphasis on GOOD writing. I felt that the schools did not prepare their students with the tools they needed to write well, nor did they hold them to high standards. I put my kids in private school, where they learned the mechanics of good writing, and they were expected to write proper essays in every class. A young man I mentored from the public school went to a top LAC and told me he felt he had been “cheated” by his K-12 teachers (he took responsibility for learning to write correctly in college, where he was given the opportunity to do so through the writing lab). </p>
<p>Well, my peers are grad-school students so… lol </p>
<p>Really, I wish that our writing skills were stronger however, in my job, I work with historical documents and I have for several years. Our writing skills are much better, on a whole, than they were generations (even two to three) ago. I think our skills <em>should</em> be stronger given the increased access to education by the masses but I still think they’re stronger than before.</p>
<p>(On a personal level) I grew up in a very, very blue collar neighborhood surrounded by tradesmen and factory workers. IMO, they can be “representative” of the average (real average, not CC average) American and their children’s (my age) writing skills are much, much stronger than their parents’. </p>
<p>Language usage has changed. I used to read old legal decisions for fun. Pick up any 19thC writing and it is less declarative, more elaborate. Is that better? I don’t know. It can seem better … but then I pick up Hemingway and compare that to Dickens and wonder.</p>
<p>Heck you don’t even need to go back to the 19th century… I spent a semester reading and analyzing laws from the early-mid 1900s and they’re about as clear as mud (which, given the topic I was studying, is horrifying). Today’s laws aren’t much better but they’re generally much more rigid and they close up more loose ends. </p>
<p>Seems that, in some cases at least, older laws were shorter and simpler looking, because newer laws had to be written to account for more special cases, close loopholes, and clear up gray areas that were exploited in older laws, or were written to provide loopholes and special cases to influential lobby groups.</p>
<p>Well, I was studying Eugenics & forced sterilization- something that had no precedent. I can assure you that the laws were neither short nor simple looking. </p>
<p>I wonder if those laws were written to be clear as mud on purpose.</p>
<p>I was always surprised when we had to do peer reviews of papers in high school, a lot of my classmates seemed to really struggle-- but perhaps they were typical and I was advanced, I don’t really know. When I was attending community college, my classmates writing was very poor and they had a very difficult time with the assignments-- shock and horror over being asked to write a 5 page research paper. At U of M, as you might expect, it was a lot better. I think we have a much higher baseline now than we did in the past, given that nowadays EVERYONE-- including working poor-- are expected to be literate, even if we don’t quite hit the mark there. Compulsory education would obviously make a difference. I wonder if there isn’t as much difference at higher class levels. To have this discussion I really think you need to define the time periods you are talking about, there is a big difference between say… comparing 2014 and 1950, vs comparing 2014 and 1850.</p>
<p>My personal anecdotal experience leads me to believe that writing has not necessarily declined, however there are so many more avenues in which to write publicly now that we see a lot more bad writing than we maybe would have in the past. In the past people wrote letters and kept diaries, these were relatively private, now we have facebook and blogs. Many of the married women I know keep blogs detailing their family life and routine, and they are passable but not wonderfully written. I would imagine like many letters women received from their friends in the past. I would perhaps guess that the highest of high class who had the highest rate of literacy in the past is maybe not quite so literate as before (nobody is reading the classics in greek or latin anymore), but I don’t think that effect trickles down to other people-- some of which only in recent decades have begun to have their first shot at getting a decent education. </p>
<p>ETA: I will say, now that I am 3 years out of college, my own writing skills are declining. I don’t use them anymore other than for forums, and a forum post requires a different skill set from a longer or academic composition. They rely on me to do all the writing at work because I am the best at it, but I can still see myself declining. I am trying to read more and have been dabbling in some creative writing to try and keep my skills. All that education seems like a waste if I am just losing it 3 years later. I wonder if I’d be keeping it if I were writing letters instead of playing with CC.</p>
<p>For about 10 years in the 80s, California schools went to the “whole-language” method of learning to read and write, which de-emphasizes drills and rote memorization of, say, spelling and grammar. It was thought that it would be better for kids to learn to read and write as they learn to speak and listen – organically and contextually.</p>
<p>I thank my lucky stars that D entered kindergarten the first year that California went back to good old fashioned phonics. The “whole-language” kids are now young adults in the work force, and I work with some of them. Of course there are exceptions but as a whole, their reading and writing skills are simply atrocious.</p>
<p>IMHO, “good writing” is writing that clearly conveys its point and is grammatically correct - oh, and with correct spelling, too. Most writing is for a purpose (few regular folks write short stories or novels). It is this type of writing that I find substandard these days. It’s just my view from my slice of the world, of course … but I think that many schools are rewarding less-than-acceptable writing with high grades. This in turn does not encourage students to strive for higher skill levels.</p>
<p>As a junior in high school–I think as a whole, students are mostly just lazy. It may seem like many don’t write well, but I think it’s just them not caring enough unless they actually like what they’re writing about. In AP classes, kids care more, and there’s a noticeable difference. For example, I gurantee the majority of my classmates know the difference between “your” and “you’re,” but the number who choose to demonstrate that knowledge is fairly low. </p>
<p>At the same time, I know many kids who are the artsy/writing type and enjoy writing and literature. I don’t think in the past everyone appreciated the arts as OP makes it sound like people did, and compared to the 18th/19th century, I think more people write better today because way back then, many people didn’t have an opportunity to even learn how to read and write. While Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence sounds very fancy and nice, he was in the minority who was that talented. </p>
<p>Countless times when a teacher says to prove this or counter that, I generally don’t want to do it. I know evidence that supports it, I’m able to support it clearly, but I just don’t want to. </p>
<p>It’s not as if I can’t write, either. I’ve won writing awards, I write stories online that have a following, and am about to start a blog. I can write. I just don’t want to write when told to. </p>