It Was the Most Literate of Times, It Was the Most Illiterate of Times

Each week, it seems, brings another doomsday proclamation about the future of American literacy. This past week's entry came from Stanley Fish, who opened his New York Times blog with what is for professors, young and old, a recurring lament: the inability of students to "to write a clean English sentence." In Fish's case, the concern was especially pressing, as the students he was talking about were not his undergraduates, but his graduate students, the very same people responsible for teaching the next generation of incoming college students how to write. "They could manage for about six words and then, almost invariably, the syntax (and everything else) fell apart." The consequences of this were immediately clear: since these were the folks teaching his school's composition classes, "What, I wondered, could possibly be going on in their courses?"

Despite this opening, Fish's piece is not ultimately a doomsday forecast about the degeneration of writing as today's unfit mothers graduate instructors train a whole new generation, who train their degenerate offspring in turn--until finally the six coherent words strung together by Fish's students will be held up as the epic of a long-lost rhetorical golden age. But there it was, laid out in terms too obvious to ignore. Worrying over the death of newspapers or the impact of the Kindle seems as pointless as arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We are doomed! Doomed, I'd tell ya... if I could remember how.

There is of course nothing new in such visions of the future. Americans have long been terribly insecure about writing. From the minute independence was won, visions of literary and linguistic degeneration danced in the minds of American educators and social commentators across the land. There are dozens of examples, but here is a parody from Judith Sargent Murray in 1794 of the productions of one of her young "educated" correspondents: "I have read all the books that I could possibly get, ... yet no desolate deceiving man, has ever come with his deceptionary tales to traduce me."

Almost a century ago, in 1913, the papers tittered over the recently-publicized charge from its own trustees that Harvard undergraduates' writing "shows a lack of compactness and nice expression," and generally fails to "approach the high standard of language" found in other generations. That same year a study published in Outlook magazine suggested that the vast majority of college students "missed a cog somewhere in the wheel of education" in that they lack "the ability to write a correctly spelled, grammatical letter."

Each generation has taken its pot-shots at the slipshod grammar, neologisms, and complete unconcern with clarity in the writing of young people. And each generation has been utterly convinced that things are getting worse. How else to explain the wild popularity of Twitter, the micro-blogging site that limits all posts to 140 characters or less? Or the fact that many took as entirely serious this spring's parody from Slate, heralding Flutter, nano-blogging for those who just don't have time to Twitter. Or that fact that the parody now seems to be depressingly serious with the launch of Adocu, which invites its users to just one "word": OMGICANTBELIEVETHISISFORREAL!

And yet, the more things change the more each generation continues to write pretty much exactly as badly as those that came before. Ever read old postcards or telegraph cables? Today we lament the loss of these once vital modes of communication, but in their day they were responsible for precisely the same laments and jeremiads as Twitter and Facebook are in ours. In the 1880s, at the height of the telegram craze, the British poet Austin Dobson mourned for a more leisurely age of writing:

With slower pen men used to write,
Of old, when "letters" were "polite;"
In Anna's, or in George's days,
They could afford to turn a phrase,
Or trim a straggling theme aright.

A generation later this same poem was quoted as part of an extended lament about the impact of picture postcards: "A few lines of greeting upon them is far easier than to do a descriptive letter, and so the letter-paper makers suffer and the art of letter-writing keeps on declining."

I for one take comfort in seeing the same curmudgeonly old complaints from my peers in generations past as I do in seeing precisely the same bad writing in my students. Young people's writing is not getting any better or worse than it has ever been: it is often quite bad for the same reason that young people often don't wear seat belts and put things in and on their body that twenty years from now will fill them with horror. Good writing is an old person's game: it requires more than anything two qualities most young people happily lack--a sense of shame and a sense of mortality. All one has to do is visit a young person's Facebook page to know how very much they lack these two senses. Eventually they will come, of course, and then, like that tattoo from freshman year, there will be pained attempts to remove the traces of their former traces. But until then, they will be Twittering, and texting and (so they tell me) "sexting." The only difference technology makes is not that our young people are worse writers than their predecessors, but that their very bad writing will live on to haunt them as prospective employers and romantic partners google them for eternity. For me, that is a horrible thought. I am so grateful that the effusions of my younger years are lost to the ages so that I can grow old with some semblance of grace. When I write now, I write well for the same reason I always make sure I am wearing clean underwear: the thought that I might die and thus be remembered wearing holey briefs is akin to the terror of leaving behind a mixed metaphor.

Of course, there is no headline in declaring, as I am here, that there is in fact no story here--that our students will continue to write badly because they can and we will continue to lament it because we must read their writing, and that our prose in its turn helped hasten our poor teachers to their waiting graves. And so on, back to when young Cain wrote, "I so totally did not do it!" Nor, to be honest, is there much pleasure. And I for one will never begrudge my colleagues for complaining about their students writing, even as I try not to bemoan the sorry syntax of so much of my own students' prose. They will get their comeuppance, I remind myself, counting my new grey hairs in the mirror.

What does seem new to me in this particular moment, however, is that for the first time we have folks openly arguing that writing is actually getting better. The most highly publicized version of this comes from Wired magazine, always eager to find a bright light in any digital storm, reporting on recent findings from the Stanford Study of Writing, a project overseen by Andrea Lunsford. Counteracting the usual start-of-term moans and groans about the end of literacy as we know it, Lunsford declares that "we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization." For Lunsford, the "life writing" our students are doing in class (Twitter, Facebook, and the like) is not only making them write more, but better.

Now this terrifies me. I am the first to argue we should stop beating up our students for being the same sloppy, careless, overly emotional and involved writers we were when we were their age. Our job is to guide them toward the toolset they will need when they start caring whether people actually understand what they are saying, or, better yet, worrying what people will say about their writing after they are gone. But if we start holding this up as the products of a new classical renaissance, we as a people are truly doomed. Not to the vision of slackjawed illiterates imagined by Fish, but to something far, far worse: to being forever nineteen. OMGICANTBELIEVETHISISFORREAL!

Comments

[larry278]

The fact that English is a living language & is constantly changing complicates these matters. People all over the world use English. We have the variations of English used in the UK, Canada, the USA, islands of Jamacia & other Atlantic Islands, New Zealand, Australia, India & other locations. If one reads the Guardian, TLS & Times of India, Economist one gets a sample of the better sort of English usage. I have a preferance for the Sydney Morning Herald since I spent time in Oz, aka Australia.
I should like to learn the version which the Times of India uses. That would complicate my life for I doubt if many in the USA are conversant with that version of English. I doubt if many Americans would understand my writing or speech if I fully learned the nuances of the English used by the Times of India.
No English using nation has an academy or other authority to determine & set standards for using English as France does for French & Spain does for Spanish. It may be that English always has changed too rapidly to regulate English usage.

[alibeamish]

Lack of concern seems to be a problem.
High school teachers mean well, but deny students an education.

[Social Construct]

The dynamics of language, written and spoken, seem to fluid and turbulent for me to see it examined by objective absolutes. I just like to read and write, doing my best to be understood and to understand.

[Social Construct]

um .... that would be "too", you know, right up there next to "fluid". Ahem.

[jackstpaul]

"...there will be pained attempts to remove the traces of their former traces."

Traces of former traces? How is that meaningfully different from just writing “traces?”

It works as poetry, but as simple prose it comes across as a bit pompous. A small tinge of the post-structuralist and following kind of writing where old notions are, in given cases, transgressed, re-identified, in-themselves deconstructed, re-framed, exposed, or otherwise repackaged in different from traditional writing descriptions and explanations, or in whatever terms and concepts you care to apply, while saying nothing new or different.

I'm not anti-postmodern. Foucault is my favorite thinker and his "discursive formation" theories have influenced me.

Cut, rewrite, revise, cut again, don't use more words than necessary (though we all fall prey to that problem), etc.

[jackstpaul]

ADDENDUM.

I left out a sentence regarding these thoughts:

"A small tinge of the post-structuralist and forward kind of writing where old notions are, in given cases, transgressed, re-identified, in-themselves deconstructed, re-framed, exposed, or otherwise repackaged in different than traditional writing descriptions and explanations, or in whatever terms and concepts you care to apply, while saying nothing new or different."

Of that series, the one I'm taking exception to is the last---"repackaged." Of course it’s important to expose, re-identify, etc. in writing where relevant.

[Sigma6178]

Firstly, you're very right to consider that every generation goes through this. We often forget that, contrary to our own egos, we are not the first generation to face a particular problem or challenge. It reminds me of the various movements throughout history that harped about the end of the world (God means it this time!) looming over the horizon for one reason or another. And, hey, we still have people like that today, so its always important to keep things in context.
Secondly, writing skills HAVE dimished over time. One could argue that this is partly due to a simplification of our language, but the problem still exists: with comparative amounts of education, we are dumber than our great-grandparents. Its difficult to concretely say one way or another that the internet is helping or if its accelerating the problem. Facebook and blogs provide anyone with the opportunity for self-publication, even if the subject matter is often shallow and pedantic. Unfortunately, we must rely on people's own desire and will to excel, to better themselves and their skills. Which always is, of course, the hard part. And Twitter: how'd that catch on anyway?
And lastly, I wonder how many times Jimboy had to consult his thesaurus. Nobody throws around words like 'facile' and 'reductive', let alone in the same sentence. If that is your everyday vernacular (and not just showing off because its an article about reading and writing), you've forgotten how to communicate with normal people. Bravo.

[Jimboy17]

He's a professor. Please bother to read the bylines. I have a vocabulary, so does he. What I wrote was a direct response to him, which I do believe he can understand. It was not intended for an everyday audience...but I do have some nice monosyllabic words for the rest of you. And the question he asked of me is both facile and reductive. I may have forgotten how to communicate with normal people (not really, as I was speaking to one person`s comment), but you seem to have forgotten how to mind your own business and be polite. Bravo indeed, my dear.

[lipai]

Mr. Gardner, I respectfully and highly disagree. I find your tone rather fatuous and your nostalgia for older writing forms morbid. Whether or not language and grammar has been atomized due to our overly consumptive and pervasive commodity culture, I don't think language or critical thinking has died. That would be a premature conclusion. I believe these tools are being remade. And language is our greatest tool because it is a self-generating tool. Though words have lost meaning and are now beginning to lose context, language is renewing itself, anchoring new meaning in other contexts. Even your example tells me this "OMGICANTBELIEVETHISISFORREAL!" is actually really clever. Fooling a computer to accept this as a word. Or just imagining texting this. This isn't just a two dimensional item. This is a three dimensional item.
I believe this is just a beginning. it is not that grammar or usage is just ignored or poorly used; it's that grammar and usage are not able to contain this new development.

[Jared Gardner - Huffpost Blogger]

But... but... that's not what I wrote (I had to double-check to be certain). I by no means think language or critical thinking has died. And I have no nostalgia for forms for writing of the past. Quite the contrary. I would rather write a Twit than a telegram or a postcard any ol' day. I mean, OMG!

[lipai]

Alright, my apologies if I came off brusque and rude. What I perceived as immediate is what I wrote prior, and I apologize again if it comes out kind of harsh.
To slightly expand on the prior post; guiding this through grammar may be pointless, or through any conventional writing skill means. This may be more about making content examination more available: basically, teaching people how to read. Not so much in the sense of words and meaning, but rather content and audience. In classical literature, the present day education has long divorced the content of literature from the history and period of the writing. In todays tweets and blogs, the writing is now directly attached to history and it seems that it isn't so much about speed, but the amount of information that is packed into smaller and smaller bits. I say that if this is going to be any kind of renaissance, fill it with content and context.

[Jimboy17]

My father (a retired history professor) and I (an aspiring professor of some sort) have had this discussion. However, my experience in academia over the last two decades has allowed me to make some extremely disturbing observations.

1. The quality of student writing is indeed declining.

2. There is a concurrent decline in critical thinking skills.

3. These phenomena are directly tied to the corporatization of the university, and the commodification of education in general.

As far as I know, there are no mechanisms currently being developed to deal with these worrisome developments.

[Jared Gardner - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, I know. I hear it every day. And yet... we have heard it every generation. Can it be true? If it were, wouldn't be all be grunting and fighting over nuts and berries?

[Jimboy17]

Now that is a facile and reductive question. Should you care to discuss the larger arc of human techno-linguistic development, I'm game. However, in the meantime, let me suggest that cultures have natural trajectories that rise and fall very much according to the manner in which media are exploited within them. Harold Innis was the first to articulate this view, and it has been subsequently developed by others since. I would suggest to you that there is a qualitative difference in what is occurring presently; namely that the character of commodity culture has become so pervasive as to have seriously crippled the quality of democratic educational systems. Just because a warning is repeated often does not of necessity make it less true. Perhaps I am making much ado about nothing. Then again, the fashion in which the very same commodified news that is belched out with alarming consistency is taken up without question by an enormous swath of the electorate leads me to think that there is indeed a connection between the growing trend towards functional illiteracy and the closing of the American mind (run on sentence). I do hope that I am wrong.

[LMPE]

In other words, "Idiocracy" was true from the start.

[inmyhumbleopinion]

I confess I haven't read the Wired article to which you refer, but my experience with my two children has been that writing is not taught well in K-8 and is elusive in high school unless you are taking honors classes. The expectations are low for public school achievement in writing. I've had to get outside help for my son who is supposedly at the "Advanced" level in statewide testing--it's a joke what passes for "A" work in composition writing. They get A's for turning in the assignment, not for content or form.

I think writing is hugely important and shouldn't be downplayed as a necessary skill. If you can't write, you can't think or communicate a new idea. Importantly, our kids are spending too much time on computers and video games and less on reading. The more you read the better you write. There's really no subsititute.

[Gorsegrower]

Given the context, I really enjoyed "...the only difference technology make..."

I give the professor 98% on his essay.

[Jared Gardner - Huffpost Blogger]

Ah, ya caught me! And thanks to you and technology, I can fix it and hide my shame...

[Tekkdude]

I have to admit as a grad student myself, I am often surprised by the grades I get on various papers that I have submitted. I have often thought that the work I turned in was hasty and sub-par. Of course, compared to some of the writing I have seen of my peers, my writing is substantially above par. It appears that writing really does seem to be on the road to becoming a lost art.

[Blakely]

The latest generation are readers and writers even it is just a twit or two. Skills can improve with time. So, any writing bodes well for the future.