We are supposedly an advanced civilization, and yet we have problems deciding how to communicate knowledge to people accurately and factually, in a way they can understand. Over the past few decades, it seems we have become more lax in general know-how, and more prone to mistakes and downright idiocy as a result.
If you are a YouTube fan, just watch any of the video posts by Alonzo Lerone (example link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycBYRBvXN6Y) about dumb questions and posts made by real people, and you will see how grammatically inept we are becoming. Folks can’t even sound out a word, let alone use Dictionary.com or a real hardcover one.
It seems that school is not preparing students to function with any degree of literacy. Not only have most educational systems eliminated penmanship at the elementary level, but textbooks have become complex, homogenized pabulum which has been whittled down to such a degree of political correctness and inclusion, there is no room for world views beyond the most simple facts. Mandates for textbooks have drilled down so far as to remove references to eating ice cream, so as not to offend children who cannot do so. It doesn’t matter that many children eat ice cream; only that one who does not would be negatively affected by reading about it. How does this prepare young people for a wider world in which, to paraphrase Bram Stoker in his classic Dracula, they may encounter many strange things?
We are seeing an uptick in autism spectrum disorders, in which children shut down to avoid the input of the world around them, and to me it seems ludicrous that science is looking for an organic cause, when the true cause appears to be that our young children are being overstimulated with too much of the world at a vulnerable time in their psychological development; why else do these “shut-downs” seem to happen at such a young age? I really think we advanced our lives into causing this problem by sociological means.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, kids were in bed by 8:00, and parents didn’t have thirty guests over with their cell phones and cable blaring R-rated movies and babble all about. Children had a soft introduction to the world, with soft music and simple reinforcement, and grew steadily into the madness that enters our adult lives, while now nobody seems to care about what is done when children are present. Unfortunately, I don’t think any parents today would be willing to go four or five years without the jumpy mental hullabaloo of whatever they did before the children came, just to see if they can get the little ones settled into some semblance of sentience and self-restraint before the attack of school and activities hits them from all sides. It used to be that peace and quiet was the norm, and yet when the autistic child needs peace and quiet, we don’t seem to take the hint. They need a solid sense of how life is, and then get the chance to read more about it.
Okay, enough philosophizing. Let’s go back a second to that word ludicrous. On CBS This Morning this past week, the question actually came up about the difference in spelling between musical artist Ludicris and the synonym–posed, I believe, by Anthony Mason–in response to signage that provided a double meaning. At least he was willing to ask.
At least there still are summer reading lists; I hope they use books with proper grammar and offer a footnote apologizing about any use of ice cream.
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