Ryan's Journal

Email has taught Americans that we don't teach basic reading or writing very well in this country. I don't think I write particularly well, but I've had professors tell me I do write clearly.

Which should qualify as faint praise, because everybody should write clearly. Writing is a necessary condition for civilization (along with farming and food storage). A culture that cannot write is unable to transmit its ideas and mores en masse between generations, to say nothing of asynchronous, long distance communication between individuals and groups.

The solution for coming generations is to force them to learn reading and writing, and maybe other basic skills, in environments where failure costs something that matters. Remedial adult education and throwing more money at a bloated, beauracratic schooling system are not going to work for society as a whole; both have already failed.

Meanwhile, teaching adult Americans English looks like a lucrative industry.