Category: Education

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Answer: Yes, But Only Just. . .

. . . and not with the kind of score I’ve been used to being able to score on academic tests over the years, just about whenever I really wanted to. . . and also only because of grandparents and parents who were well-read and encouraged reading well-written, high-information books. Oh, and a really rigorous (for the times) 8th grade biology teacher and a few others who didn’t rigorously stifle independent study (yeh, that was a problem even back in those days of yore. . . ). But I was one of the lucky ones for my generation:

Century-old 8th-grade exam: Can you pass a 1912 test?

By contrast, the “sample questions” for the 12th Grade history section for the 2010 NAEP are relatively simplistic, and cover very little of a nature of questions that my generation of 8th-graders would not have been able to ace. *shrugs* Of course, my acing, now, of the five sample questions is no test. But considering that some serious scholarship has demonstrated that college grads generally are barely better informed on American history/civics than high school grads, the chart below is at least somewhat interesting.

12th-grade-US-history

Continue reading “Answer: Yes, But Only Just. . .”

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It Wouldn’t Be So Bad, Except. . .

This came from the “pen” of a best-selling author, in a book from a traditional publishing house, with proofreaders and editors and other subliterates (Oh! My!) on staff:

. . .she glanced at one of the only two. . .

Oh!*gagamaggot*! I could live with “one of only two” because that makes sense, but “one of THE only two” is just stupid!

If it were only this example, well, I could understand a slip-up or two, but no! It’s at least one such example of stupid expression, wrong word, malapropism or simply mind-bogglingly weird example of contemporary subliteracy–as dictated by popular “culture”–per every five to ten pages. It’s as though the author were so immersed in the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind’s subliterate expression of popular verbal “literacy” that such things have over-ridden (no, I do NOT mean “over-written” although that may also apply. . . )any reading of genuinely literate works he may have once consumed.

And so, subliterate destruction of written English gains ground, as more and more people see such things in popular, widely-distributed, widely-read works.

*sigh* Is it too soon to see this, when combined with the hard work being done in pubschools and “higher” ed to dumb down literacy, as the result of a conspiracy. . . of dunces?

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Sometimes I Wish Tech Writers Spoke English

The impetus for this thought resurfacing today? A “white paper” titled,

“77 Features For Windows® 7 That Every IT Professional Should Know About”

“For”? I checked the paper out, and after reading the first section confirmed what I knew: the writer doesn’t know what “for” means. . . or “of” for that matter. Those are two words it’s a bit hard for English speakers to bobble as badly as this writer did.

Well, the writer was probably just a graduate of an American college sometime in the last decade or so.

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No, “Illiterate” Is NOT Too Strong a Term to Use

If one were to use “illiterate” to mean anyone who is not literate, then the morons I keep reading in print–morons who get paid for what they write!–are illiterate. “Literate” really should be reserved for folks who are well-read, and anyone who writes, “tye dyed” (or “tiedied” or “tie died”–all abortions I’ve seen in print) for “tie dyed” is illiterate. Anyone who writes “there’s” when the subject is plural is an illiterate. If someone says such a thing, then they’re at the very least innumerate. Such stupidities as “backyard” for “back yard” (or the equally stupid “backseat” for “back seat”) are gaining acceptance simply because so very many people have no clue about the useful distinctions between an adjective-noun combination and an adverb, or just DGARA, and a deluge of misuses finally swamps good usage.

In a reasonable society, complete, total and absolute morons who misuse “decimate” to mean “annihilate” or “extirpate” would be given 5,000 lashes with a dangling participle and then be staked out on a split infinitive somewhere in Death Valley. Let them be joined by empty-headed vegetables who’ve somehow been able to pay illiterate, lobotomized monkeys to type “it’s” for “its” and perhaps society would have a chance for survival. . .

BTW, I’m not averse to useful changes in usage, but misuse that destroys useful distinctions is utterly abhorrent to me.

There must be a circle of hell reserved for illiterate “editors” who hire even more illiterate “proofreaders” and who then foist such garbage off on a paying public. One can only hope that they all find their way to their ultimate destination soon.

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Ya Just Can’t Make This Shiite Up

“Journalism”–offering employment opportunities to the subliterate.

In addition to the obvious reason, this Foxnews article chaps my buns because the author (and editor?) got paid for spouting this kind of gibberish:

“A Staples spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that they do not allow businesses that deal in firearms from entering the contest.”

Will someone please buy a copy of “English for Dummies” for the author of that monstrosity? (In case the site changes it w/o a transparent acknowledgement of the error(s), I’ll just post a screencap, hmm? CLICK to embiggen)

illiterate-journalist-03

Would someone like to diagram that sentence for me?

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Well, I Had Been Enjoying the Book

Not sayin’ the title, but really?

. . . there’s enough (plural noun)s on the. . .

Linguistically innumerate. *gagamaggot* And,

“Ah.” He smiled, and even drunk as he was it was the kind of knowing, sarcastic smile that set my teeth on edge. “Jealousy.”

OK, I’ve not necessarily given enough context for the second, but people who use “jealousy” when they mean “envy” really set my teeth on edge. There’s a clear and useful distinction between the two that poorly-read folks seem all to have missed, and now subliterates are forcing their destruction of a useful distinction out of English. I just hate that.

So, as much as I’ve enjoyed the rest of the book to this point, if this sort of thing continues, I may end up putting this one down just because of the annoyance factor.

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Now, see, if he could count on a literate audience. . .

. . .the author of this awkward line,

“. . .the lovely scars he had from the one leg being severely fractured to the point of bone poking through the skin after. . .”

. . .could have saved a whole lotta words with “compound fracture“. But because he can no longer count on his readership being much more literate than the typical eighth-grader nowadays, he had to go all around the barn to use something like ten words (no, I’ve not actually counted) to say what a literate* person could vividly grasp in two.

No, I am not using “literate” in its least form here. I use it in the sense of,

“1 a : educated, cultured. . . 2 a : versed in literature. . . 2c : having knowledge or competence. . . “

And NONE of those apply to someone who cannot read “compound fracture” and either understand the term at once OR have both the intellectual curiosity and competence to either winkle the meaning on their own from context (not necessarily easy to do in this case) or LOOK IT UP! (N.B. When I was a kid, we had a monstrously huge two-volume dictionary–which I still have–that spent most of its time near or under the head of my bed, because I not only looked up EVERY word or term I did not immediately understand from context or simply learned new words and terms from reading the thing for pleasure. And I still do not consider myself as literate as either of my grandfathers were.)

More and more folks today have vocabularies limited by what they HEAR via the Hivemind, and more and more folks today do not even understand the words they hear from that propaganda machine. And so otherwise moderately literate authors HAVE to dumb down their text. (The one who cobbled up the abortion I cited above does still have ALL his characters use “there’s” with plural objects. *sigh* It’s. . . “interesting”–in a gagamaggot kind of way–to hear characters with multiple doctorates in the sciences who are linguistically innumerate. *profound sigh*)

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I Blame the Hivemind

For at least a couple of decades now, anyone who has watched the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind so-called “news” shows has been programmed to eliminate the ability to discern clear distinctions as to many things, but the most egregious–and most consistent–destruction of reason has been the twisting of time. How many times have you heard *cough* “news” *cough* readers refer to events that occurred some time in the past as happening contemporaneously with the reader’s babbling?

Past tense for past events, idiots. But no, in *cough* “news” *cough* readerland present tense is fairly consistently used to refer to past events. And so an essential anchor of reason is eroded daily and common folk attempting to be writers begin to write such drivel as,

The sun rose rose over San Antonia [sic] de Bexar as a Blood [sic] red omen of what the day will [sic] bring to the men of the Alamo.

Good Sharkey, Colonel god! Past tense, properly used, mixed with future tense speaking of a (long) past event! Oh, why not. *sigh* If the past is present, then surely the past is future as well. Time means nothing.

OTOH, any literate person who’s not been lobotomized by watching *cough* “news” *cough* shows would have written,

“The sun rose rose over San Antonio de Bexar as a blood red omen of what the day would bring to the men of the Alamo.”

It’s still a bit overwrought for me, but at least the conditional is dealt with properly. It’s not just aspiring web “journalists” committing such gagamaggot faux pas with English, no. Such superbly dumbass writing abounds in traditionally published works, from newspapers to books from traditional publishing houses (which at one time employed literate proof readers and editors) and in the speech of *cough* “news” *cough* readers inhabiting the Hivemind, the political and entertainment classes and even Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries.

Is it any wonder these dumbasses who consider themselves an elite that’s fit to rule the hoi polloi are making a mess of everything they touch? They cannot consistently deal with speaking clearly and rationally on simple subjects.

And the sheeple eat it all up with a spork (because they cannot be trusted with a real fork).

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Easy One

Not even going to hint at this book’s title. From the first paragraph of the prologue:

“. . .light of the two moons surrounding the planet. . .”

WTFugeddaboutreadingit?!? Trying to imagine how someone could even THINK of “two moons surrounding [a] planet” is not something I want to deal with any more than I want to deal with a book written by someone who could even possibly imagine such a turn of phrase, let alone actually use it in a novel.

Book has a “four star” rating out of five on Amazon, which tells me that there are a LOT of stupid people reading and rating books on Amazon. Or else all the raters are the author’s mother under different screen names.

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Literacy on the Internet

Whether one considers social networking forums, specialty forums focused on whatever topic, blogs, or even professional “news” outlets and “scholarly” articles posted on the Internet, I’ve come to the conclusion that well over half the people that present themselves as English speakers would benefit greatly from buying and religiously using Rosetta Stone English Level 1 for as long as it takes to master basic–very basic–English.

That is all.