No one would go to a car dealership, plunk down $200,000, and ask for “anything with a title.” And no one would have ever settled for a red bicycle instead of a car. Yet few people are ready or willing to critique our higher universities for providing inconceivably worthless degrees in exchange for rapidly rising tuition rates.
Our school masters collected payment despite precipitously declining standards. The “experts” convinced their patsies (the students, parents, and elected officials) they were indispensable and then rendered students less and less capable (the US ranks 40th on the list of 40 developed nations in academics), while increasing the fees for providing what they recommend as necessary services.
Herein lies the debate: Literacy in the colonies, prior to the establishment of the nation, ran about 60%-80% among white men, without formalized schooling. Those were individuals able to read complex writing like Thomas Paine, John Locke, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope. In fact, John Adams is rumored to have said that a native-born American "who cannot read and write is as rare ... as a comet or an earthquake."
Today, American schools boast proficiency levels in the 30 percentiles, meaning most students can’t read at grade level (but typically get passed up to the next grade anyway). That’s bad enough, but we must also account for the degradation in reading skill over the years. “Proficiency” doesn’t mean what it used to.
For instance, in the late 1700s to early 1800s, the population read averaged grade 16+ (above college) level. Though largely self-taught, their standard reading options were like the below, from The Federalist Papers, 1788:
"It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of the several State constitutions, that some of them are far more explicit and emphatical in their declarations of the rights of the people than others."
This kind of writing exhibits complex sentence structure, formal vocabulary (e.g., “emphatical”), and multiple clauses in one sentence.
By the mid-1800s to late 1800s the average level of reading was grades 12–14, or high school to mid-college, but not above. For example, a Mark Twain type of sentence might be:
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read; for to possess the ability and let it waste away is the saddest sort of ignorance.
This kind of sentence still has the traits of sophistication of language and a philosophical bent, using stylistic and rhetorical devices, but we see the more conversational tone begin to emerge.
Starting roughly in the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the general public’s proficiency in reading falls to grades eight through ten. An example of this kind of writing that pervaded our newspapers and other current literature is as follows:
Most people can learn to read faster by practicing just a few minutes each day. It’s a habit that pays off over time.
Notice the shorter, more succinct sentences with their focus on practicality, using plain, everyday vocabulary. There is no intent to inspire the reader to higher thought or big ideas, no effort in the writing style to practice any rhetorical craft or poetry.
Today (2000-2020), of course, it’s ever worsening, post our whole-word-reading debacle, as most of our material is now for a sixth- to eighth-grade-level reader:
Reading every day helps your brain stay sharp. Just 10 minutes can make a difference.
This extremely concise language emphasizes clarity and accessibility, as if the reader has too much clutter in his brain to focus too hard on the subject, or too little brain matter to devote to it. In addition, language these days is often broken into shorter bursts or punctuated with small pictures, emojis, and bullets.
The art of writing and communication has suffered from intellectual erosion under the tutelage of our schoolmasters. Teachers and administrators may be the worst form of intellectual cognitive
Our spoken language has fared no better. New Jersey recently declared teachers need not pass the state’s basic literacy test to qualify to teach. How will that improve children’s reading scores?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, we are also behind in adult numeracy and problem-solving skills, and we are on a downward trajectory. How much farther must we descend in our abilities before it will be too late for us to recognize our decline?
This nation’s school system is like a president who is cognitively failing, but he and those around him keep protesting he’s fine, because there’s too much money in appearances.
Sam Sorbo, author of Parents' Guide to Homeschool: Making Education Easy and Fun.
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