What has caused the decline of literacy?

Question

Slang is more widely accepted than proper speech.

It's accepted for children to swear continuously.

Is it the decline of morals that cause the decline of literacy?

Answer 1

Read The Closing of the American Mind.

Actually, there are several reasons. One is multiculturalism that insists that poor speech is as good as proper speech. This devalues proper use of language generally and literacy is a casualty. Another is a laissez-faire attitude in schools where teachers are more concerned with students' "self-image" than in correcting errors or teaching them things. Along with this has come grade inflation, social graduation and all kinds of things that have produced both illiteracy and innumeracy ( can't read and can't count or do arithmetic or reason logically ). Teachers find it easier to give in to such politically correct notions and the power of teachers' unions make it impossible to change. Politicians have both permitted and enhanced these problems because they pander to the "lowest common denominator" and don't want their stupid appeals to the LCD to be analyzed by logical, rational and literate voters.  They are constantly extending convenience features to voters of diminishing literacy. The use of multilingual ballots ( scanting literacy in English ) is only a step toward not requiring literacy in any language.

Finally, another contributing factor is the decline of the written word ( books and newspapers and magazines ) in the continuum of media communications, being superseded by radio ( first ), then movies and TV and now the WWW ( since the Internet before WWW at least required you to understand words ). Communication by telephone and now cellphone requires only the ability to speak and punch a few buttons. Even text messaging is a step forward although you need not be more than minimally literate to use it.

An unhappy situation but good for me and my friends and our children and grandchildren since relatively "we" will be more competitive.

Answer 2

The sad state of modern literacy is a direct result of the decline in the quality of public education.  We literally have marginally literate teachers "teaching" the next generation "information" they don't know!

Best wishes and good luck.

Answer 3

I think it's in the breeding.  I know that's not a popular theory, but I believe it 110%.  Stupid people have more kids than smart people, by far.  Smart people rarely have more than two kids.  Stupid people on the other hand regularly have two kids before they finish high school.  Those kids aren't going to learn how to read and write properly.  They'll have a couple kids of their own before their brain is even developed enough to comprehend English.  It's a numbers thing.

Answer 4

George Bush

no child left behind