Re: [tlug] Paul Graham's Disagreement Hierarchy

["SL Baur" <steve@example.com>]

On 3/31/08, Niels Kobschaetzki <n.kobschaetzki@example.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:28 PM, SL Baur <steve@example.com> wrote:

>  >  The things I have noticed from decades of watching Usenet and later the
>  >  web, is that English skills are in general declining.  That a "high" level of
>  >  education is no guarantee of any kind of writing skill whatsoever.  That
>  >  non-native English speakers can often be the most literate in English,
>  >  especially those of non-UK European background.
>
>
> I think that it is no wonder that it occurs to you that English skills
>  are declining by watching Usenet. In the beginning most users where
>  academics and with time it changed because nearly everyone has
>  internet access and therefore a decline was foreseeable.

Not so.  I got into Usenet late in the game -- a few months before the Great
Renaming and net.* went away.  By then, the majority of the users in the
groups I followed were employees of early adopters of the technology (TRW
was one of the first 100 companies to get a .com domain name).  When I was
at Caltech a year or so earlier, internet access and Usenet access was
restricted and I never qualified for it.

The .EDU folks I'm referring to were in US public Universities, paid for out of
my tax dollars and after the 13 years of education required to into university,
one could reasonably presume that a minimal knowledge of written English
had been absorbed.   That this is not the case and getting worse, is what I'm
referring to.

Eternal September (AOL) is something different.

The Age of the Evil Empire (which I observed when I was Mr. XEmacs and
encouraged the Microsofties among us to do an official port to Microsoft
Windows NT) is also something different.

>  >  Editors are no guarantee for good copy, and you are not a True Reader
>  >  if you do not have dead tree books in your possession with typographical
>  >  errors, spelling and grammatical errors, etc.
>
>
> I think that the problem is that a) a lot of publishers do not have as
>  many editors as they did and b) that the publishers try to put out
>  more and more stuff and that the low count of editors has to deal in
>  less time with more books.

That's no excuse.

I'll point out that I was employed for some time by a man who was an elected
Superintendent of San Luis Coastal Unified School District (the public school
system I went through early in life).  He is a good man, an honest man and of
all the big bosses I have ever worked for, I respect him the most.  The hours
when he would come into the office where I was tending the computers were
often fiery the days after School Board meetings.  To say that we were in
violent *agreement* is an understatement.

I have more dirt on what goes on inside California public schools (and I
presume everywhere in the US, since no state seems particularly immune)
than I ever care to write about.  I've told Steve-san some of the
stories.  Other
parents seem content, I'll just keep my own kids far, far away from US public
schools.

It's probably better for you to flame me.  I have 100% resistance to fire and
way too much knowledge about what goes on inside schools in the United
States.

-sb