The Death of the Reader

The Initial Rant

Way back in 2009, I had a fit of rage over the misuse of the English language by native speakers and wrote a note on my Facebook page entitled "OMG leet spk lol roflcakes!!! (A rant/lesson)". It is as follows:

I was debating with myself today. The topic was that of the sudden decline of knowledge in grammar, punctuation, and spelling in the past couple of years. After a couple minutes, I realized the answer.

Texting.

Why, oh why, can't people just text ACTUAL text, instead of that atrocious leet? I can't understand half of what is said to me unless it's typed out in real English words. My Dad sometimes texts me in Leet. I have to spend a good minute-and-a-half trying to figure out the messages hidden in those letter/number "words." I think these Leet words have spawned a terrible generation of illiterate geeks. This is probably the reason that hardly any teen can spell worth a dime. Perhaps this next part isn't a result of Leet, but it still irks me: I should be flattered when somebody tells me that I'm awesome over chat, not annoyed. "Your so cool!!" ...My so cool what?

Here's a lesson for those of you that have been wondering about what "your" to use:

Your - Possessive singular. "Your spelling is terrible." Or "Your mom!!!"

You're - A conjunction of the words "you" and "are" in the English language. "You're failing English because you can't spell." Or "You're so cool!" (I actually got a wedding invitation saying "your invited." That was REALLY sad. I don't even own an invited.)

The word "there" is misused as well.

There - In reference to a place. Also used as an exclamation. "I miss being there." Or "There!! Finished!"

Their - Possessive plural. More than one person. You cannot say "that person killed their language." A good example of using this word: "Their spelling is awful." Or "Their English teacher mustn't have taught them much at all."

They're - A conjunction of the words "they" and "are" in the English language. "They're not too hard to understand." Or "They're using Leet everywhere these days."

OH!!! And let's not forget that "to" is also misused!!

To - The most common "to" in sentences, used in tandem with a verb. "I'm going to crush you." Or "I'm going to the zoo." Or "To be or not to be."

Too - In excess. "You're using the word 'their' far too much." Or "Too bad." Also means 'as well.' "I'm tired of people being silly, too."

Two - The number 2. "I bought two apples." Yes, in that sentence, you must spell it.

Also:

Weather - The state of the elements outside. "The weather is awful."

Whether - An indication that there are two choices of outcomes important to the topic of the sentence. "I don't know whether or not the weather will clear up." Can also mean "regardless of these two outcomes" if said "whether or not."

Lose - To misplace something. "I hope we do not lose the power of the written word!"

Loose - To slacken something's hold on something else, or to describe such a state. "The American hold on the English language is really loose."

Chose - The past tense form of the word choose. "I chose not to answer the question he asked due to its utter stupidity."

Choose - To make a choice. "Choose to educate yourself about the proper use of grammar."

Thank heaven that's over with. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you just how hard it is for me to read sentences without punctuation, even if all of the words are spelled out perfectly. There is no real way for me to go through all of them, but I will highlight a couple things.

There is ALWAYS a punctuation mark at the end of EVERY scentence!! "." for a regular sentence, "!" for an exclamation (NOT TO BE USED EXCESSIVELY, ESPECIALLY IN LEET!! If I see another "lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" again, I will blow something up with my wicked glare of death. I've been told that one can make volcanos erupt), and "?" for a question.

After the sentence, there must be a space (formerly two spaces, but one is now the norm), and the first letter of the first word of the next sentence (whew) MUST be capitalized! Also, every proper pronoun (eg. "I" or someone's name) has to be capitalized. Sentences do NOT look like this: omg i'm so excited rofl.i cant wait 4 the new hannah montana movie.lol!!!!!!!!!!!!

Commas are VERY important! There should be a comma before a conjunction (but, and, because, yet, though, etc.), but the comma is only necessary if the two sentences it connects are complete.

Always use commas to separate the items when writing a non-bulleted list.

Conjunctive words need to have an apostrophe between the conjoined words. I'm, you're, they're, can't, won't, mustn't, don't, etc. It's is included in this list--it means "it is."

Do not confuse plural and singular words. "Does anyone have their book with them?" does NOT make sense. It's "Does anyone have his book with him?"

Apostrophes are not to be used to make plurals. Ever. Plurals do NOT have apostrophes! "We sell book's" is utterly stupid. What that says is that you are selling something that belongs to a book, but you don't tell us what it is. (Please note, however, that some possessive plurals require you to place the apostrophe AFTER the word: "I wish all of my students' English did not make me sick.")

I can't teach you how to spell. I'm SO sorry for that. However, if you ever have trouble figuring out how to spell a word, pull up your handy-dandy word processor and figure it out! Then type it out instead of copying and pasting it. You'll find that you'll learn much quicker that way.

Thanks.

Yes, this is how I feel when I read "leet". 

Weird Al sums up my feelings in this brilliant song that came out not that long ago:

Now, before anyone jumps on my back, let's get a few things out there:

1). I am aware that grammar rules are not always followed. Being a writer and an English teacher, I can be the first to say that breaking the rules of written English can sometimes make a piece of writing better. There are sentence fragments riddled in my rant; here's the thing, though: I am aware of them being there. The sentence fragments are used sparingly, and to make a point. When correcting papers, I am lenient on fragments unless they make absolutely no sense even with context clues. Punctuation is sometimes fun to play with as well, but I am not going to ignore the types of things that I mentioned in the above rant.

2). I wrote these examples myself (without looking at any other posts or even at a dictionary) when I was nineteen. They could be more specific, but I am rather proud of them, especially since they are written in such a way that people who truly do not have any idea which homophone to use in a sentence might be able to understand and remember.

3). I am aware that the pronoun "they" is being used a lot more frequently and is being accepted widely as "okay" now due to the fact that some people do not identify with the assigned gender that either "he" or "she" gives. I think it started, however, with females being angry that the default pronoun is "he" or "him" when speaking about a single person. You can easily change it to "her" or "she" if you want, but then someone will find fault in it somewhere. Nobody seems to have an issue with the masculine pronouns being the default when speaking about humans in the other Latin-based languages, though...

4). If you want to see more incredible evidence of how unfortunate the lack of proper spelling and/or punctuation can become, just type "misspelled tweets" into your search engine. My heavens.

5). Texting was "a thing" in 2009, for sure, but it wasn't as big as it is today. I no longer think that texting/the internet is the main reason behind this atrocious slaughter of the English language. I think that it's because not many people read anymore.

The Real Problem

I know that some people simply do not like to read. People have different hobbies, and I can respect that. I do think, however, that there are people who say they do not like to read because of what they were asked to do in school. Reading becomes a burden to students, especially in grade schools. In college, reading simply comes with the territory--you're studying, for heaven's sake. I really do believe, however, that school is killing would-be readers. There are many teachers who simply assign books in order to get work out of students. The reading isn't usually anything that actually sparks the students' interests, and the consistency of this assignment of uninteresting and time-consuming reading results in students who would rather gouge their own eyes out than read a classic book. Sometimes, it even goes so far as to have students who don't want to read any book whatsoever.

I am not the only one who thinks that the flawed school system is killing readers. Kelly Gallagher, a renown author and teacher in the English field, wrote a book about it. The title is a word of his own creation: Readicide. He defines this term as follows:

"Read-i-cide: noun, the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools" (from Readicide, page 2).

Gallagher spent twenty-two years as a classroom teacher among other positions to do with English in school settings, so he is well-acquainted with those mind-numbing practices. I have to let you know that the assigning of certain reading (actually, most of it) is not the teachers' faults. Most English teachers, especially in high school, have a set list of readings to choose from, and some that they don't have any choice in assigning (usually a play by Shakespeare--have you ever met a ninth-grader who has not read Romeo and Juliet?). It is disgustingly ironic that the very practices that are supposed to create lifelong readers are the very ones that are slaughtering the students' drives to read. I say slaughtering because the numbers are staggering (there are all sorts of links that I could put here about school-aged children and reading skills, but you can find them--it's very simple to do so), and it carries over to their adult lives. In fact, my husband recently came home from work the other day and told me about a conversation that he had with one of his coworkers about movies, and the stories found within them. At this time, Ender's Game was getting ready to come to theaters. My husband and I both grew up reading that book (by Orson Scott Card--go read it. Seriously.) and absolutely loving it. As they were speaking about newer movies with great stories, my husband's coworker asked, "Have you seen the trailer for that Ender's Game movie?"

Job purposefully made to look vague! 

My husband, who had been tracking the movie's production since I had shown him that it was in the works, excitedly answered, "Yeah! That is one of my favorite books! Have you read it?" When his coworker said he hadn't, my husband told him that he should, because the story (and the writing itself, since they are two different things) was/is amazing.
"Nah. I'll wait for the movie to come out," said the coworker.
"No, seriously, you should read it!"
At this point, Coworker looks at Husband with incredulity and says, "I don't read!"
He didn't mean, of course, that he couldn't read... just that he won't read. Ever. Not unless he has to.

The National Endowment for the Arts is a fantastic source of information regarding all of this. While it may be considered "old' to some people, their research in 2004, Reading at Risk, shows trends that have not necessarily been reversed or even stopped in the USA. Truly, though, it all seems to really start in high school--most middle school students still seem to enjoy reading things that they choose to read.

Here are some examples of what high school students anonymously said about reading that Gallagher has in his book on page 4:

• "I never really liked reading, but I don't have many books."
• "Reading is only fun if I have nothing else to do."
• "Reading really sucks."
• "Reading is a big waste of time."
• "I read books only because my teachers make me."

He also said "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

As a lover of reading as well as an English teacher, this makes me so incredibly sad. I know that young students who are being taught how to read adore being able to do it themselves. There are amazing new worlds in books, and there are incredible ways to pretend through characters on the pages. It doesn't have to be fiction, either! The school systems are not teaching our students to be life-long readers, they are teaching the students to loathe reading. If you are forced to do something without an explanation of why or the ability to make it interesting, you're going to wind up hating it. There is danger in getting people to stop reading books of their own accord; not only does it make people more susceptible to stupid misspellings or horrid grammar, but it makes them less capable of forming their own opinions. Less capability to check facts or have enough attention to the details contained within the lines of the written word can end in a society of drones. We've already started to see this with people refusing to read paperwork before they sign things... and then getting really upset when they realize that something they don't like (but that they agreed to!) is happening as a result of that signature--or they cannot see the difference between a hoax and the actual terms they agreed to. Either way, if you stop reading, how will you learn? The main way I get my information and satiate my love of learning is to read! I read constantly: books, articles, newspapers, blogs, news reports, etc. are all out there for the reading, and I love the knowledge they hold. I love being able to read multiple sources and decide for myself when reading nonfiction! I love being able to escape for a short period of time while learning new words in sci-fi and fantasy novels! I love the human experience and emotion that I can find in other fiction novels! There is so much to learn out there! I was taught how to go about reading various forms of writing in school, but you know what? The time spent on teaching me about different types of writing only involved me actually reading maybe one of each thing and then moving on to memorizing facts about Greek Mythology for some test that was happening three weeks from that point. See, schools are so focused on getting test results that they no longer really allow for true reading. I think that the schools want the students to remember facts about assigned gonna-be-tested-on-this-eventually books (usually from The Canon, which is another rant I could have) and grammar rules, and that's it. What I don't think the school system realizes that is if you allow students to read what subjects they want to read about and at their own pace earlier on in school, they will actually learn instead of memorize a great deal of the things they'll end up being tested on. Because I read a great deal on my own time through school, I learned very quickly when to recognize if a word "looked wrong." I may not have been able to spell it correctly on my own, but I knew that it was wrong and could get a dictionary in order to correct my error. I also learned how to structure an argument, how to create a compelling scene, and how to use punctuation and grammar even before I knew the rules. You want your kids to do well on English tests? Let them read, and help them to love reading to learn.

Some Ways to Prevent a Murder

Seriously, you guys. Seriously.

Obviously, that is a tongue-in-cheek heading, but I really do want to prevent the slaying of what usually is a natural love to read. Learning is fun. When you see someone actually get something, you will know what I mean. Or, if you can remember a time when some type of mystery was finally unlocked in your own head and you could walk around the newly-opened metaphorical room with wonder, you know what I am talking about. Learning is incredible, as long as it is actually learning. Too often, we tag the word "learning" to schools that are not actually helping our children learn--they are making them memorize for testing. Now, in the classroom, we know that our students are technically not spending a lot of time on actual tests, but what doesn't really get put into the statistics is just how much of the instruction time is used to prepare for the tests.

You know what...? I will write a blog post about my feelings on testing later. What I want to really focus on is the fact that the time used in classrooms to either prepare for testing or to do that testing is resulting in the students developing a hatred of reading. There isn't any time allowed in schools now, especially with all of the laws that have come out that necessitate students passing tests in order for the school to dodge a penalty, for reading for pleasure. Sure, sometimes they allow for sustained silent reading (SSR), but my experience as a student is that time is not for the students--it is for the teachers to try and get stuff done and to keep the kids quiet. They expect students that have been trained not to like reading novels to suddenly want to quietly read instead of work on homework that they could finish up in school instead of at home... where they could be doing other things. So, when SSR happens in classrooms now, I have noticed that it has simply become "silent time", and reading for pleasure doesn't ever really happen anymore. Either the students are working on other homework, or they are reading a book assigned to them in a different class. The teacher, it seems, usually doesn't care. I truly believe that if you allow students to have SSR and be allowed to read what they want to (providing for school-appropriate content), they will end up liking reading a great deal. There may be some students who feel like SSR is forcing them to read, though. To that, I say that the teacher can help the students by being a Book Whisperer. Donalyn Miller, the person who wrote the book The Book Whisperer, has been helping what we English teachers call "non-readers" to become lifelong readers by doing this. The basic premise behind being a Book Whisperer is that you figure out what interests a person has and what level of reading he or she may be at, then mention a book in passing about what that person likes and at the probable reading level. You, of course, have to have read a great deal of books about a wide range of subjects in order to have this ability. You encourage and help, but never force, your "non-reading" friend to start reading. The more people read things that genuinely interest them, the more they will find that reading really is an incredible thing. Miller's students have been known to read three hundred books in a year on their own. That's amazing!

Another thing that I think we need to do is get off of the electronic IV we seem to have hooked into our arms indefinitely. I know this sounds rather hypocritical coming from a blog post, but it is true! In 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts released a study called To Read or Not to Read about how electronics have come to replace our society's prior love of reading. If you don't want to take the time to read that report, you can listen here to NPR's coverage of the report. Here are some of the findings:

• As people read less, they read less well, and students who read less well do less well in school. People who do less well in school do less well in the work-place and participate less in civic life. (Duh! If you're stuck on the computer, you're not going out and doing other stuff!)
• The first generation of students raised in the midst of electronic media read significantly less--and less well--than previous generations of students. 
• Internet reading produces shallower reading than book reading. Internet reading has much more emphasis on reading headlines and blurbs. You hardly ever find deep reading on the internet.
• The reading proficiency of college graduates fell 23% in the past ten years.
• What used to be considered a proficient high school level of reading is now considered a college level of proficient reading... and only one out of three college graduates reads at that level.
• 55% of people who read at a "below basic" level are jobless.
• HALF of the adults in the USA do not read either to themselves or to their children.

These are only SOME of the findings. Books are no longer bought. New media does allow people to access newspapers and other such things, but, once again, it seems to be more about headlines and subheadings. Some of my family members love reading on their electronic devices (like Kindles, etc.), and that is better than nothing... but it is so easy to simply stop reading those books and move on to other distractions that the devices have on them. People can't seem to stop using apps--they can't stay focused long enough on books. 

I cannot explain to you how incredible it feels to read a book with pages and finish that book. To love a book so much that the cover is worn and the pages are bent because it was read so often. When I see brand new books on a shelf and somebody right next to them with headphones on and a cellphone out, it makes me so sad. Books used to be loved. Everyone used to have a library card, and I remember spending hours in the library, pouring over books and finding new and interesting things in them. One of the ways we may be able to prevent a hatred of reading is to go to a public library (and stay OFF of the computers!) and mosey around the shelves, looking at the thousands of titles that are there and waiting for us. You don't have to scroll to search... just stroll! There's no lag, there is a synopsis on the back, you don't have to buy it to read it, and there is no storage space to be eaten up. Seriously--I challenge you to go out and spend at least an hour in a public library and reading this week. I'll do it, too! If we want to have a better future, we need to start reading as a society again. 

Please, go out and, as IKEA has just beautifully said, "experience the power of a book book."