Question: Is language evolving or devolving?
Post: Minimum of 400 words.
Remember to use specific
examples—avoid making general statements without backing them up with
specific examples from your reading or experience
Initial response post-due Wednesday, 8/26
At least one reply post-to another class member's blog--due Friday, 8/27
My post...
It is completely obvi that
language is devolving. Btw, not that I have time in my skedge to even write
this. Lol.
Today’s mania for shortening already-short words is of course just a symptom of
a larger malady. In education today, learning to write clearly is an important
skill—many school and government leaders, as well as education experts,
recognize that students are graduating and arriving for their freshman year of
college unable to write well. A myriad of factors contribute to this
trend. In the mid-eighties, Neil Postman attributed much of society’s
detrimental changes to our obsession with the idiot box. In his “Age of Show
Business,” television bombards us with a steady stream of information without
context. Jump ahead nearly thirty years from the time of that book’s writing,
and we are living in the era of the 24-hour news cycle. Almost no information,
even on so-called “serious” news programs, is safe from the “Now...this...”
phenomenon, in which important issues are overshadowed by the latest celebrity
gossip.
Also, whereas television viewing once occupied, for most people, a set period
of the day or evening, our computers are now on all the time. When students
today need answers, they don’t really search—they Google. The search engine
might also be called the Information-Without-Context Machine. Students find the
byte they need at that moment and move on. Increasingly, students also believe
in the credibility of everything they read online. Anyone with an internet
connection can now publish information. In an age in which context is more
important than ever, it has become more and more difficult to establish context
or credibility for the information we find online.
After locating a byte of information using Google or Bing, a student is now
charged with the task of creating a meaningful context for that information he
pulled out of the ether. However, how often does a student truly understand not
only the assignment—what he is being asked to do—but also the reason for that
assignment—what he is being asked to learn? Students today are often
overcommitted and overscheduled. There is little time to ask why—it is
more important to complete a task and move on to the next one. For example,
coaches routinely demand 100% from their athletes—an empirically impossible
demand that leads to a get-it-done mindset (as well as causing a great deal of
stress).
And yet true learning is about asking questions. If asked, I would wager that
the majority of American students would be unable to come up with any truly
compelling reason for their learning. Without a true understanding of why they
are engaged in the act of going to school, education becomes simply mandatory.
English teachers like me are very used to the groan that accompanies any
reading assignment. Postman was right in his claim that we are headed toward a
Huxlian Brave New World, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban
books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for
there would be no one who wanted to read one” (Postman xix).
I’m not blaming these students for not wanting to read. The Great Works of
Literature are being edged out of the American school curriculum in favor of
more practical non-fiction.
If you ask me, the future likely looks like the world of Feed, in which
language and education have devolved to the point that school is now the place
one goes to learn how to shop. But we’ll read that a bit later...
