Because our kids can't write worth a darn.

If you want to see it in action, check out the blog project I started with my two sections of history of rock. There are links to their blogs, and a couple of them aren't bad, but some of them are horrendous. Also, it's amazing to me that we have students who have lived their whole educational lives with the internet don't understand how it works.

http://ahshistoryofrock.blogspot.com/

This child must surely be ten or younger ?

So today we listened to some Beatles songs. I really like The Beatles song because they have some pretty good songs. They do not go fast or to slow and I kinda like that because I can hear the words to the songs and I know what they are singing.
Also were listening to some more songs fron The Beatles. I can not wait to see how these songs compare to their previous songs. Hard Day's Night starts out good and has very good tune and can relate to the words in the song. The song if I fell is a really good song because it starts off "smooth" and it does not get any faster and we can hear everything that they are saying.

"Sunday, September 9, 2012 So i found out that i like the Beatles song "In Misery" because of the all the voices that are conjoined in that song and how it has such sad lyrics but is played upbeat."

From my own memory of elementary school, I'd guess this was written by someone around 10 or 11 years old.

approximately 30% of the undergraduate population with whom I work get referred to the university writing center for assistance at some time during their career.

You know how when someone you know comes out as gay, and then someone else says, "Funny, they don't look gay."... it's the same thing with students. The special ed ones look just like the honors students. Unfortunately, you can't tell them apart from their writing either.

As far as what Joe said... grade inflation might be the real reason we're doomed.

Thank you! We're always told by administrators and front office personnel that we should have "high expectations" for our students. In reality, high expectations only lead to mass failure which leads to parents blaming the teacher (of course), which teachers who want to avoid friction avoid, which leads to very low expectations. We're being held by the short 'n curlies, if you didn't know.

You're preaching to the choir teacher.

you should have seen the weeping in law school when the first semester grades came out and some of these kids got their first ever C or D. lol.

I think the shift happened between 96 and 00, because that's when I started teaching, and I was shocked at how bad the writing was then. But then I noticed a very sharp and steady decline between 07-10, and it's getting worse.

ru srs?

I see what you did there!! I've been teaching since '96. The "test scores" here in my parish are up. We even had the highest scores in our parish. Sad thing is, I know what kids "knew" in '96. Today, it's out of my hands. Teacher creativity is dead (where I live).

Teaching.... you teach the student where he is, not expect him to be where you think he should be. If a student doesn't "learn" something, then the "teaching" hasn't happened. Simply having "high expectations" isn't teaching.

Having said that.... 70% of students who come to California community colleges don't have the academic skills to be successful in post-secondary education.

Am I wrong for not grading grammar and spelling? I'm not their English teacher. I'm just trying to get them to state an opinion and defend it, which is like pulling teeth.

But, seriously, my wife works in a writing center. The majority of the students she sees are literate at a 4th grade level.

I hate to sound like such an old fogy, but yeah writing skills have deteriorated horribly over the years. When I went to college as a returning older student I have to honestly say that pretty much every time, if there were older students in the class they were always the better writers. Somewhere over the years, being able to write well must have fallen by the wayside in importance because people over a certain age seem to have no problem with it, but younger students struggle. I should probably thank the old nuns with rulers making me diagram sentences for my job today.

Oh and my opinion is yes, you are wrong for not grading grammar and spelling. If a student is assigned writing, part of the assignment is to write properly not just to pile a jumble of thoughts onto the page. I get that it might end up being a painstaking process, but learning to write and general literacy is one of the most important things a student can learn and provides a foundation for everything else. I think getting a kid to do one well-written paragraph would be more helpful than getting him to turn in three pages of crap. Writing should be emphasized across the curriculum. Kids do have a ton more to learn these with all the tech they have to integrate and everything else, but that old three R's stuff is still vital to providing a foundation for future learning. And that is my completely unqualified, amateur opinion.

/Off soapbox

I agree with you, but then i'm the only one doing it, because the english teachers aren't. I'm already spending 7 days a week at school, teaching 8 out of 8 classes for no extra pay (supposed to get a an extra 20% per class over six), and I don't see how I'm going to fix this situation on my end.

It makes me sad, but I'm so tired, man.

I think the shift happened when kids stopped practicing penmanship in elementary school and started typing papers instead of writing papers.

I teach seventh grade social studies. We are not allowed to take off for grammar and spelling.

I see a few things here:

• Dunning Krueger Effect
• "Things were better in my day" phallusy
• "Kids these days" lamentation
• Related to the first, but also the other two, the idea that even if we don't want all kids to be treated as if they attend Lake Woebegone Junior High, all kids are, in fact, above average, & should produce as such; instead, the population will regress to the mean, & half of the population will be below the median, & half above... &, yes, I am sure, the median seems to have moved downward, but, again, I think that perception is more a product of solipsism &/or Dunning Krueger than anything (To wit: LooGAR's fantasy girl Sarah Palin is older than FT, so she was in school "back in the day", but her word salad remains non pareil; her ignorance is not a product of being young, today)

Yeah, I don't think on the whole it's actually worse - I think it has always sucked. That said, I remember my history teachers and others grading for grammar. Hell, I almost got into a fight with my 8th grade teacher because he docked me 5pts every time I wrote a lowercase n like a small capital (N). I got a fucking 0 on a paper because of that, but guess how I write lower case n's these days?

SP: fallacy

There. The first step is always the hardest.

I can grade 146 blog entries a week for grammar, spelling, syntax, and content and still maintain the high levels of achievement in my five choir classes and my songwriting and recording class.

Thanks!

Not trying to read Monty's mind on this one, but odds are he was intentionally going for the dick joke on that one.

Garans