For some background on the discussion centering around Jacqueline Howett and the critique of her grammar, I need to refer you to Rachel Swirsky and Shalanna.
As I see it, besides Howett’s inappropriate and unfortunate response, which has been discussed in great detail in many other places, there are two issues that have been raised. The first is whether knowing grammar makes you more intelligent, and a better writer. The second is questioning the knowledge of youth today and its superiority or inferiority to the previous generations. I choose to tackle the second point first, because I need to use it to frame the first point.
Please read Rachel’s post now, if you haven’t yet. You know, I was so pleased to see someone write up so well the same kind of discussion that I’ve been having at faculty meetings and retreats for a very long time. I am SO tired of the idea that students now are inferior to students of previous times. This comes from so many instructors, and I sometimes wonder if the problem isn’t the students, but the older generation.
Rachel does a great job of tracing worthless new generation syndrome back to the ancient Greeks. The latest example I’ve had of this was a critique of eReaders from a speech teacher. She was recommending a seminar on the sunset of the paper book, and wanted to hold a seminar/reading circle that basically said that the Internet had curtailed the ability of its generation of users from thinking deeply.
Congratulations, if you’re reading this, by the way, you shallow thinker, you!
She had an expert book to back her up. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. That reading circle is actually going on at our college right now. When called to task by other peers, the speech teacher suggested that what made this argument plausible was that she liked books, and her students seemed more shallow to her. Gotta love that anecdotal evidence from a biased party!
Anywhoo, two things came up in the discussion: One instructor (not me!) suggested that we were just this side of not being able to convince our students that we were the most out of touch dinosaurs (which says nothing about the claims of the book, or those no good youngsters!). The other thing was that myself and my friend Olga suggested that an adaption to a differing kind of media/medium did not mean that the person using the new literacy was inferior to the person using the previous literacy. Rather, the literacy and the perception of the world was different, not superior or inferior. We went on to talk about the advent of the book versus the oral tradition, the advent of television and so on.
And while the division in the resulting discussion was not generational entirely, it looked like there were many instructors who decided that today’s students had less rigor than yesterday’s students, and that we had let our academic standards go to crap, etc, etc, etc.
I don’t think so.
Now, where I work is a community college, so I have to admit that our standards are not Havard’s. I often say that Kirkwood is the school of 2nd, 3rd, and 66th chances. We exist for you to try college as many times as you want, or you can afford, and our hope is to scaffold you for success. Yup, we have a set of special ed classes for students who need it. Free tutoring. A writing center. An entire department devoted to developmental math, writing, and reading. ESL classes.
If you want to try to succeed at Kirkwood, and you don’t have the tools, you can count on us to try to help you get them. Your success is rather up to you and the limits of your person, but we will try to help.
Some may be offended by the idea that our school does this. Well, this is what community colleges do. It is, actually, our mission. I think it’s a rather enlightened idea, that we try to help education be accessible. But in some ways, the increase in our enrollment backs up the idea that kids today just aren’t as smart as we were. There is another factor: college is becoming a lot less affordable for a variety of reasons, and study at our institution makes sense for a lot of working class students.
But back to the kids going to 4-year schools who aren’t quite as smart as we were. Um…no. I agree that there is grade inflation. I agree that high schools are under pressure to pass kids more and treat them with less rigor. BUT the number of college graduates in our country has not decreased substantially. The test scores on a comparative basis have not decreased substantially. Overall, I don’t think our institutions of education have changed much. As a matter of fact, regrettably, there are some colleges that are as elitist and snobby as they’ve ever been, and they still produce graduates.
I find myself wondering why we often feel the need to criticize the younger generation as inferior to us when they are raised in a different way than we are, and we in fact are responsible for creating the world that has shaped them. We let our governments underfund their schools so it is harder for them to get that good education accessibly. We ridicule their teachers and pressure them as parents for grades that are high, whether they earn them or not. We praise them for any sign of slight achievement because “everyone’s a winner.” It’s a wonder they turn out as well as they do, given all the obstacles we put in their path.
And what about this different way of thinking? While being on the internet may close certain kinds of doors, it opens others. Often the refusal to understand something different than our norm says more about us than about the next generation.
In sum, then, I say hurrah to those no-good youngsters for moving in a different direction, planned on or not. I also say that I’m here to help you, given that enough of my peers seem out to screw you. I don’t think you can’t do it. I think you can, or at least you can try. I expect you will succeed differently, with a different kind of intelligence.
Of course, that doesn’t address the question of writing, grammar and standards at all, does it? Of course not. That’s part 2.
Catherine
That’s right on, Cath.