If I didn't, I wouldn't be spending so much of my time in starting up Newcastlewest Books. I wouldn't be investing my money in a contract with Lightning Source to print the books and ship them off to the reading public.
How misguided am I?
Students enrolling in the journalism program at Dublin City University are not equipped to jump into their work. They don't have the basic writing skills needed to put together a simple news article.
First year students are being taught basic grammar and English, to compensate for all that they failed to learn as children.
Clearly, someone who is a poor writer is likely a poor reader. There's a great deal that can be absorbed by frequent exposure to the written word, and the digital generation isn't getting it.
They can text, but they can't spell and they don't know how to use punctuation. They want to be journalists but they can't communicate in a standard, accepted fashion.
Do these would-be journalists even read a daily newspaper? If they did, how could they have avoided learning proper sentence structure and the use of the comma?
Those who wish to be journalists can't write. Does it matter? There won't be anyone to read their words because children don't seem to be reading.
Will there be enough literate people in five or ten or twenty years to buy books and support the publishing industries?
Or do we return to the days of the town crier, calling out the news for those who are incapable of either reading or writing it.
2 comments:
These are the kids who even 50 (let alone 100) years ago would have no chance of coming close to a college at all. Yes, their writing and reading skills are poor but at least they have writing and reading skills.
According to DCU, these students took high marks on the English portion of their Leaving Cert (sort of equivalent to the ACT or SAT).
Have we dumbed down the requirements, lowered the bar or inflated grades?
For those who don't go on to third level, there is no remedial program to compensate for what should have been taught at the primary level.
What makes this even more depressing is that this is taking place in a country where Catholics were once barred from education and priests ran "hedge schools" to teach in secret. Has the value of education gone down over the years?
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