Education levels.

[Lord Nikon]

Does it seem to anyone else that the level of education overall is dropping?
There are more people posting on forums in txt spk, or with poor or nonexistent spelling or grammar. Sentences become optional, whole words and sentences appear in capitals.

The more I see of society in general the more this seems to be becoming acceptable. We are looking at school leavers unable to parse meaningful sentence structure, who stare blankly at polysyllabic phraseology, who believe a dangling participle is covered by low slung jeans and who believe U R is a sentence.

Bill Gates is not always the most eloquent of individuals but he put this quite succinctly.

Rule 1. Life is not fair; get used to it.

Rule 2. The world won't care about your self esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3. You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone, until you earn both.

Rule 4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

Rule 5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

Rule 6. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7. Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try "debugging" the closet in your own room.

Rule 8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

And a further point for consideration. If your application for employment contains major grammatical and spelling errors, too many abbreviations into text speak etc, the chances are that if your job relies on making notes someone else may be required to interpret later, your application may fall short of the mark.

[Maggy J]

Sigh!

Can you remember being young?

The time when everyone over 35 criticised what you wore,how you spoke,what you did,where you went,what you watched and what you listened to.

Leave our youngsters alone.The vast majority of them are fine.They will emerge eventually as hard working parents and home owners.They will grow up and assume responsibilities as we did.

Agreed not all of them,there will always be a group that are feckless and fail to mature.But the majority will be fine.

[Lord Nikon]

I am not criticising the youngsters themselves Maggy, I am criticising whatever in society has led them to believe that excessively abbreviated speech in a public forum, or on a Job application is acceptable. We used to teach children better than this. Whatever abbreviations I used in notes certainly weren't acceptable in the finished article. You see replies on national newspapers websites along the lines of "u r rong, its not rite to complain like that 2 sum 1" and that is now deemed acceptable. Surely standards have not slipped that much?

[Maggy J]

Originally Posted by Lord Nikon

I am not criticising the youngsters themselves Maggy, I am criticising whatever in society has led them to believe that excessively abbreviated speech in a public forum, or on a Job application is acceptable. We used to teach children better than this. Whatever abbreviations I used in notes certainly weren't acceptable in the finished article. You see replies on national newspapers websites along the lines of "u r rong, its not rite to complain like that 2 sum 1" and that is now deemed acceptable. Surely standards have not slipped that much?

Don't forget many youngsters embrace modern technology with fervour(as did you and I at their age) and are responding to the many websites via their phones.

[Xaccers]

After I changed home insurance I got a phone call from someone called Michelle to answer a questionaire as to why I changed.
She asked me how much the new insurance cost me. I said half what the AA quoted.
She then asked me how much more expensive the AA quote was, I said 100%, then had to explain basic maths to her.
She asked a question with the options "Agree, Disagree, Neither agree or disagree" and I said indifferent. With hindsight, when she asked me what indifferent meant, I should have said ambivalent (yes, I know).
My gf works in the insurance business, and she's forever having to explain the meaning of simple words.
Last week she had to explain that Status Quo wasn't just the name of a band, and that while old, they hadn't been around since Roman times.

[Lord Nikon]

I bought 1 item at 6.12 from a local shop and 2 items at a pound each. The register was broken. The assistant who can't have been much older than 18 had to use a calculator to work out the total. I had stated "8 pounds 12" before they had picked up the calculator. Their response when the calculator agreed with me "how did you do that?"

[Charlie_Bubble]

I was amazed a few weeks ago when we went to London Zoo for the day. There were lots of school groups there and the few white kids in them sounded like they had been born and raised in Jamaica...

---------- Post added at 09:26 ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 ----------

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Don't forget many youngsters embrace modern technology with fervour(as did you and I at their age) and are responding to the many websites via their phones.

Was there any modern technology around when you were young?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Lord Nikon

Does it seem to anyone else that the level of education overall is dropping?
There are more people posting on forums in txt spk, or with poor or nonexistent spelling or grammar. Sentences become optional, whole words and sentences appear in capitals.

While I personally don't like txt spk, it's worth remembering that language changes.. Also, the internet has it's own form of etiquette (which was created before computers had multiple fonts and were able to make things bold) and that states that anyone who uses all capitals is shouting..

The more I see of society in general the more this seems to be becoming acceptable. We are looking at school leavers unable to parse meaningful sentence structure, who stare blankly at polysyllabic phraseology, who believe a dangling participle is covered by low slung jeans and who believe U R is a sentence.

Unable, or unwilling?

I wonder if part of the problem is reading. My mother actively encouraged me to read when I was a kid. A lot of my friends weren't. They have trouble with spelling and grammar. I don't, generally (although neither are perfect in my case).

Bill Gates is not always the most eloquent of individuals but he put this quite succinctly.

He's more eloquent than Steve Jobs. Although, my dog is more eloquent than Mr Jobs.

And a further point for consideration. If your application for employment contains major grammatical and spelling errors, too many abbreviations into text speak etc, the chances are that if your job relies on making notes someone else may be required to interpret later, your application may fall short of the mark.

True.

[Lord Nikon]

Stuart, I am aware that language evolves, but within a generation we have gone from articulate to rtcul8 - I mean, I am all for encouraging thinking outside the box, however, when the results cm out as txt spk it becomes more difficult to envision thinking taking place within the box, or head of the individual involved.

[heero_yuy]

Whilst I find text speak irritating, there is a good reason in that as been mentioned the texting limit and accessing sites via mobiles but what really annoys me is the incorrect use of words as in: Their, they're and there*[1]

I know apostrophies are really nasty: Gardener's and gardeners' *[2] and even I struggle with them but more attention to detail is needed. It has taken me many years to get a decent grasp of English grammar and punctuation not to mention my appaling spelling (I had three attempts at getting an 'O' level scraped pass) so I get annoyed when people are lazy or ignorant.


*[1]Ownership, (concatenation) they are, and (e.g.) over there.

*[2] Ownership by somebody called Gardener and gardeners as a generic group e.g. Gardeners' World.

[Xaccers]

Similarly with less and fewer.

[Pauls9]

.. and "there's" as short for "there are", e.g. "there's ten people waiting". "There're" seems to have vanished from the language.

[TheNorm]

Originally Posted by Lord Nikon

Does it seem to anyone else that the level of education overall is dropping?....

No, it is increasing. Kids today learn about cloning, herceptin, greenhouse gases, internet fraud and HIV/AIDS. And that's on top of the usual three Rs and history.

They also have to learn to deal with schoolmates who are into drink/drugs/sex, often with parental consent (or turning a blind eye). In some parts of the country they grow up with gangs and knife crime.

Text speak arose because it is easier to type these words on a mobile phone. As for spelling and apostrophes, was there ever a time when the signs in the market were correct?

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Pauls9

.. and "there's" as short for "there are", e.g. "there's ten people waiting". "There're" seems to have vanished from the language.

Surely it's short for "there is"

Txt spk I don't have a problem with on mobiles and forums which allow it, their rules, I'm the guest so I either ignore those posts or try and work out what's being said.
Personally, I prefer using full words.

[AntiSilence]

I can understand people shortening words to fit in space constraints on a mobile phone, but they're using it where space is not limited.

And, I don't just mean young people either. I see people who I was at school with doing it too.