The End of Eloquence? Not on Our Watch!

The End of Eloquence? Not on Our Watch!

By Andrew Pudewa
(This article is condensed from its full version published in the 2012 Arts of Language for Schools. )

“Most of the young people we have to hire these days really can’t communicate clearly. They can’t speak three sentences without saying 'like' and ’cuz' and 'stuff' several times. They can’t write two complete sentences with correct grammar and capitalization . . . and forget about punctuation! And they can’t think. When something goes wrong, they just sit there and wait for someone to tell them what to do! It’s infuriating!”

Traveling around the country, I constantly meet professionals from all walks of life: managers and business owners, teachers and professors, supervisors and graduate students. Though their histories and circumstances are often quite different, they all have one universal frustration, which when voiced, sounds very similar to the statements above. Now while it’s true that older adults have always complained about young adults, it seems undeniable that at this time things are really worse than ever before.

In Mark Baurlein’s 2008 book The Dumbest Generation, he argues forcefully that the digital age is stupefying young Americans and jeopardizing our future. His examples of profound ignorance and inarticulateness now ubiquitous in schools and workplaces are so convincing that one wonders if there is any remedy, or are we really at the end of a literate, educated America? While some readers contend that Baurlein’s causation argument is lacking, virtually no one argues that the problem is not acute.

As an observer of people, a student of the times, and a teacher of English, I must concur; technology is having a viscerally negative effect on the linguistic skills of students. Inundated by TV and music with marginally correct usage and syntax, young people today are constantly amused by the ever-present entertainment of Internet and video games. This, when reinforced by constant peer interaction, results in an environment that practically prevents a teenager today from developing any type of sophisticated use of words. We couldn’t have contrived a worse language development environment had we tried!

But some of us just won’t give up. We fight. We are the hard-nosed adults who are willing to be despised for demanding that students write—and speak!—in complete sentences. We are the teachers who stand for proper language in the home and correct grammar at the dinner table. And we are the lovers of language, who strive not only to model correct usage, but who devote many extra hours searching for the best ways not just to restore basic reading and writing skills, but to help our students cherish words and appreciate great writing. Some of us even defy the rote-learning-is-evil fallacy and boldly require our students to memorize poetry and prose, not only to build their vocabulary and syntax, but to actually improve brain function as well. We will need—we do need—more leaders like Frederick Douglass, the illiterate slave boy who grew up to become one of the finest orators of all time; and how did he achieve such eloquent use of language? In great part by memorizing dozens of famous speeches found in one of his few and precious books!

But beyond that, we must consider the effect of language on the mind and soul. Being human, we think primarily in words; we express and preserve ideas with words; we build civilization with words. Words are the tools of thought, and the more words we have, the more thoughts we can think. As language becomes less complex, so does thinking, and as thinking becomes simplified, people become simpletons, easily conquered or controlled.

We as teachers of English are not just doing a job, not just trying to help our students be ready for college, not just trying to preserve a modicum of beautiful tradition. No, we are on the front lines of a war against the minds of our students and the future of their world. Economically allocating every moment of time, every square inch of resource, and every erg of energy available to us, we must fight heroically against the digital armies of text and chat, the warheads of Halo and Hello Kitty, the silent espionage of Facebook, and the anthrax of apathy. This battle is not for those weak in spirit or for those easily confused by modernist methods and blind optimism. We do nothing and we lose. We teach and we may gain ground. Will the “twit” generation continue to deconstruct our language and with it themselves? No. Not on our watch!