Forum / Food 4 Thot:

• 
  Ramon Collins

  Sep 27, 07:14pm

  On CNN's newscast this morning, a prominent educator stated 70% of eighth graders read at a first-grade level. Jeez, that's "See Spot run. Run Spot, run." I'm not too sure writing has much of a future.

  Hw abt U - R U wth me?

• 
  Kate Brown

  Sep 28, 05:17am

  Just a couple of days ago a teacher friend of mine, here in Germany, was saying very similar about standards here. Is it something new though, or has it always been this way?

• 
  Kate Brown

  Sep 28, 05:18am

  And without the word 'something', my sentence didn't make much sense, did it...

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 28, 07:30am

  I doubt that this is a new phenomenon, however, you may have to go back to the first few decades of the twentieth century to find illiteracy so pervasive in America.

  What effect does this have on the future of writing?

  When you look at the quality of writing available online, and some remarkable new writers whose books continue to show up in bookstores, I would say that the future of 'writing' is not as bleak as it seems, but is going through a shift in its commercial base that is difficult to read and its future may be impossible to predict.

  When you consider that South America has produced an amazing body of literature in countries where the populace may have worse skills than those encountered in American schools today, you can't be convinced that art in literature is dead.

  I would question those statistics anyway, especially when they come from an interview on a network news channel.

• 
  Kait Mauro

  Oct 01, 06:23pm

  Those statistics are horrifying. I do some volunteer work with an inner-city middle school in St. Louis and I know some of the sixth graders there can't read at all yet... it's a little bit different though because a large percentage of the kids (much larger than other schools) have learning disabilities. Still, children need to learn the vitality to be found in books.

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