As the publisher of Watching America.com, the site that translates foreign news about the United States from all over the world, I have read dozens of applications from people who are interested in joining our ever-growing editorial team.
Some time ago, I received one from a young man who had a master's degree in International Relations from a well-known university on the East Coast, with a GPA of 3.9. I'll call him Nik to protect the innocent. As is our usual practice, I sent Nik an article to edit, explaining to him that he can take as long as he needs, as only quality -- and not speed -- is important.
It came back to me full of basic errors of grammar and vocabulary. The complete inability to use an apostrophe, and many of the other errors, suggested to me that Nik must not be a native English speaker. I couldn't let a non-native speaker with this poverty of English near the articles we publish, but I called Nik as he had other skills that we could perhaps have used in different parts of the organization.
When we spoke, Nik's English was fluent, and it turned out that Nik was American through and through -- born and bred in the good ol' US of A.
I was stunned, but should not have been surprised. I went through the article with him and pointed out the errors in the use of apostrophes throughout, and asked him to correct them. He couldn't. He couldn't even tell me the rule about their usage.
3.9 GPA - and cannot use an apostrophe. A master's degree in a subject that is completely verbal, and depends on the careful and detailed exposition of complex ideas -- and cannot use an apostrophe.
Following some soothing words to soften the blow of the subsequent question, I asked Nik how he obtained a master's degree without knowing basic grammar. He told me simply that this is how it is in American education -- that professors don't correct work. We had an interesting conversation and it was clear that this candidate was by no means dull. I told him that he had been let down by his educational institution and that, should he wish to pursue it, I would communicate in whatever form with any of the authorities of his university; I would argue with him for a partial refund of his fees, and I would make it clear that this is the stuff of national scandal. As someone who has in the past been involved in hiring for a private-sector corporation, I also told him the grammatical errors in his resume (rather than its content, which was impressive) would alone eliminate him from the running for any serious job. He was glad that I did.
Having been looking at applications for five years, I know that Nik's application was not unusual.
Would it were possible to head off the effects of the we-don't-give-a-damn attitudes of educational institutions and the so-called "teachers" or "professors" who work in them. I fear it is too late.
These attitudes can be seen in wider society. For example, signs in my local Fry's, a multi-billion dollar company, advertise "Chip's". Apparently, they can't afford someone with basic grammar to write their signs. Or they just don't really care. Fry's stores are riddled with painful-to-look-at signs with errors in basic English that would shame most seven year-olds not only in the country of my birth, but in many countries where English is being taught as a second language.
A note to mothers: be careful what you expose your children to. You thought you only had to worry about the drugs and TV violence...? Now you have to worry about your local grocery store's helping to turn your beloved son or daughter into someone with such a confused grasp of the language that he or she is unlikely to get any job -- except, of course, at that grocery store. (Anyone who can tell me why "store" has an apostrophe in the last sentence should apply immediately to Watching America for an editorial position!)
In fact, shoppers, why haven't you already reported those incorrect signs to the management for the sake of your country and its children?
I am a complete America-phile, so it pains me to ask this, but how exactly, America, do we expect to be taken seriously if our people around the table in the international halls of power, where rightly or wrongly the big decisions get made, write our own language with more errors than those foreigners who've had to learn it as a second language, or even as a third?
Last year, when I was living in Arizona, that state voted to increase sales tax allegedly to maintain schooling in the state. America, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at something if the people who are supposed to deliver the service don't know enough to do the job. It also doesn't matter how much money you throw at something if the people who know how to do the job are not allowed to put red marks on their students' papers because of some policy set by the same political class who are responsible for taking your money to fund this so-called educational system.
Shame on all politicians who just continue to throw money at a system that has seen standards decline even as funding has increased. Shame on the same politicians who implement policies that prevent the good teachers from giving their students the benefit of their knowledge -- and that prevent such people from wanting to work in the system in the first place. Shame on all parents who pay huge fees to universities and then don't demand the most basic standards from those who receive their money. Shame on all teachers who don't care enough about this problem to do anything about it, and tell themselves that it's OK because they're following whatever rules they're told to follow. Shame, too, on any union officer who is more interested in protecting the pensions of their members than in ensuring that their members have the ability and permission to deliver the education their young charges have a right to expect.
As ever, we get what we deserve. But our children do not: they are the ones who will have to compete with ever increasing numbers of increasingly well-educated young people from developing countries all over the world.
Whatever the reason, and whoever should be blamed, America needs to come together to address its taught ignorance. If our debt doesn't finish us, our education system certainly will.
America has already bred its lost generation, and given them 3.9 GPAs. What are we going to do about it?
___
(Note; a reader will occasionally find errors in English in Watching America articles -- despite the various systems we have in place to ensure they never occur. We apologize for them. The difference between us and Fry's, and it seems, the American education system, is three-fold: 1) We care about errors; 2) we fix errors when they are pointed out to us and 3) WA has neither profits nor funding, so while we strive for quality, we are limited by resources and the time kindly donated by our wonderful volunteers. Nevertheless, the standards we set for our editorial team seem in some respects to be higher than those set for masters' degrees at many institutions.)
Follow Robin Koerner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rkoerner
Amb. Karen Kornbluh: Waking Up to the Need for Education Reform
C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: Can You Pass the Global Standardized Test?
Justin Snider: How the U.S. Education System Looks to a Leading Expert Abroad
John M. Eger: The International PISA Tests Are Leading America Astray
The Near-Myth of Our Failing Schools by Peter Schrag
How One District Fixed Its Failing Schools - Newsweek
Are Teachers Unions To Blame For Failing Schools? : NPR
Obama Backs Rewarding Districts That Police Failing Schools ...
The overblown crisis in American education : The New Yorker
The 'crisis' of U.S. education - The New York Times
Solving the U.S. education crisis | Marketplace From American ...
U.S. education crisis hurts job competition | Business First
There is nothing teachers can do about this problem. If the teacher honestly grades students who write poorly, too many fail and the teacher gets fired.
I can comment on the mistakes. I can circle them in red ink. I can make suggestions and corrections but I cannot fail a kid for poor grammar. I don't have that power and the kids know it. I don't know what to do.
(God I hope I wrote this post correctly.)
The manager told him he was wrong and to get out.
For those genuinely interested, “helping” in the sentence at issue is a gerund, which is simply a noun that is formed from a verb. It is this noun, “helping”, that is the object of the verb “worry about”. The apostrophe in "store's" is therefore possessive. Omitting it would be incorrect, but inasmuch as omitting it would provide any meaning at all, it would incorrectly make "store" the object of the verb.
The simple rule is that "gerunds take the possessive".
And, while we're at it, should the question mark in the previous sentence be inside those quotes?
Because, along with really not liking that rule, I wonder if it is an absolute. That is to say, does the rule apply even when the quotes are around a single word and are being used, not to indicate a spoken phrase, but instead as a way to signify that a single word has been pulled from previous text?
While I understand that helping can be a gerund and thus take the possessive, it seems that this construction is less clear than it would be if the possessive and gerund were omitted. Since there are many institutions responsible for "helping to turn...," it seems that the emphasis in this case should be on the fact that your local grocery store is doing it. Thus "store" as the object of "worry about" makes sense to me.
I have noticed a big generational difference in writing skills. The e-mails I receive from older (over 40) students are usually written with some care, and are generally easy to read. The e-mails I receive from younger (under 25) students rarely use punctuation or capital letters, and I often have difficulty discerning what, exactly, the younger student wants to tell me.
A high school English teach of my acquaintance has told me that the district frowns on teachers spending too much time on grammar or punctuation.
The details are important...Even in an e-mail. Ponder this for a moment. A few years ago, a man died and left his estate to his three children: William, Thomas and Emily.
Thomas and Emily were very upset. Why?
By the way: This is a true story.
"Store's" should be "stores" or "store".
"Now you have to worry about HIS helping to turn your beloved son or daughter..."
It's not a sentence construction that I use, but I'm not sure that it is incorrect. Any HONEST to GOSH English experts willing to weigh-in on this?
"some students graduating from this school will not be prepared. We apologize for this, but the difference is that we care about our students unlike some places. Our school has neither profits nor funding, so while we strive for quality, we are limited by resources and the time kindly donated by our wonderful volunteers..."
Or perhaps the professors are themselves incompetent to do so.
You then decry the state of education in america, casting blame widely and far.
Why not identify the "well known university", even if you would prefer to allow "Nik" to inflict his poor language skills on the professional world?
Could it be that your anecdote is innocent of the truth?
Could it be that this polemic bears more of a likeness to a grumpy homeowner snarling at passersby on the public sidewalk than any real alarm?
Take the 8th-grade, 1895, Salina, Kansas, oneroom schoolhouse graduation test, rocket scientists.
"4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?"
Not to mention they would have no idea how to take an open-ended exam.
Writing needs to be clear and understandable and it must be possible to decipher the meaning unambiguously. If it does not meet these objectives, it fails. I do understand that many structural issues in composition can be a bit forced as the sentence structure in many languages is rather different than that of English, so mapping Chinese, German, or Russian to English can result is strained structures. I do value good writing, but in the community I work with, English is a second language much if not most the time. I have adapted.
I do value and appreciate good writing, but my focus is on accurate communications and understanding.
Engineers are always pretending they are smart, when actually, they are hacks. Why? Because they know nothing about anything except the narrow subject they studied in college. The creators of Beavis and Butthead say that Beavis and Butthead are the kind of people who grow up to be engineers. I have taught engineeers. Tremble for the fate of the world, ye citizens.
Did you do anything except study a narrow subject in college? Did you ever reach beyond literature to math and science? And did your study of your subject in college prepare you for applying it, or did you have to spend further years refining your skills and broadening and deepening the knowledge before you could use it to anyone's benefit?
I have worked with and known engineers and writers and artists - and I wouldn't consider some off-hand comment by the creators of Beavis and Butthead (no doubt intended to promote their work) to be insightful analysis.
I have dealt with English majors whose survival in the real world I find astonishing. And I have dealt with smart, intelligent people who have a joy in literature and the arts - and aren't so narrow minded as to think the arts are limited to flowery writing, splotches of goo on a canvas, and sculpture that is indecipherable by anyone outside of a small clique.
Although I have known engineers and scientists who could and did write good, grammatical, well-punctuated English, most of them didn't. I suspect that nearly all of them could, but such a low priority was assigned to good, clear technical writing that practically nobody wanted to take the time or make the effort to produce it. In fact, my managers and colleagues treated me with suspicion, and all but accused me of wasting the company's time, after I started rewriting technical documentation on my own initiative.
I finally became so sick of, and disgusted with, the low regard in which good writing was held that I quit and went freelance. Sadly, I can tell you that German scientists and engineers are not much better than their US American counterparts when it comes to producing good technical writing. But, as a translator, I can at least do something to make the English translations more comprehensible and grammatical.