Texting and the Degradation of Literacy
I don’t think I even need to explain why texting is a problem. Well, not necessarily texting. It’s the text “lingo” or whatever it is.
The text-speak began with a bunch of lazy 8-year olds who, by the way, shouldn’t have had cell phones in the first place, started shortening words. I’m sure that at first, it was very creative and witty and their friends were like “that’s kewl.”
I guess I don’t have a problem with it’s beginnings because there’s something about being that age that makes you want to have your own language. I’m pretty sure I tried, on several occasions, to create a new form of talking. The key is that I grew out of that phase.
Now, people are texting almost more than they’re talking. I guess this goes along with the whole trait of people becoming more and more disconnected with other human beings… but that’s a whole different can of worms.
I, for one, love text messaging. It’s very useful in quiet situations to be able to communicate to another person while you’re bored or in a meeting. Or bored in a meeting. However, I still spell everything out. I have to be in a SUPER rush to shorten tonight to “tonite.”
Admittedly, the word tonight is one that I could understand if you were to shorten it. You have to hit 4 and wait 3 times in a row! It’s frustrating, I know. But, with all these new phones coming out with full keyboards on them and such, why in the world do we need to continue this trend. The act of shortening words was so that you didn’t have to wait on the numbers to get out of the way for you to put letters down.
There is no excuse for shortening “later” to “l8r.” It’s ridiculous. This kind of “spelling” (if you want to call it that) makes you have to struggle to understand what in the world the person meant.
Then, cell phone companies started picking it up. Advertising it to parents and kids alike. Saying to the parents, “You have to learn this or your kids won’t think you’re ‘cool’ and they won’t love you.”
Weak parenting could be a factor in this to, but that, like human interaction, is for another post.
Sorry. Back to the topic at hand. Texting.
So, here’s the cell phone companies with the little disrespectful b-of-a-daughter talking to her mother like, “IDK, my BFF Jill?”
All the while our schools are sinking into a pit of failure and test scores are plummeting into an abyss of retardation.
People complain that tests are too hard for their children. “FCAT (here in FL) is too hard on our students. They need more testing skills.”
You know, I would believe the whole “I just test poorly” thing if it were only a few kids, but it’s everyone! That can’t possibly be! There are people out there with problems that don’t allow them to test well… like… illiteracy.
The problem with kids and people is that there’s a serious degradation of literacy in our country and I think it’s tied significantly to the perpetuation of things like “text-speak.” Abbreviations have always been around, but the fact that they are beginning to become more and more acceptable to the average person is ridiculous.
Shouldn’t we hold people to a higher standard?
It would be one thing if somehow people could separate texting from everyday typing or speaking, but it’s just not happening. Emails are becoming a new form of formal communication for businesses and correspondence. They have generally replaced form letters, and they’ve almost completely annihilated phone calls.
But in the midst of this change, the loss of formal language is occuring. So much so that you could get an email from a representative at a book publishing company with misspellings in it.
REALLY?
Is this the legacy that we want to continue?
If you’re tired of your children failing tests in school, how about trying to get them to spell things correctly. At least they’ll have to use their brains for a minute or two a day.
If you’re a school that’s failing, try teaching critical thinking skills. Try just doing school again instead of teaching for tests. Because that’s just like texting. It’s a truncated form of teaching that only prepares someone for the task at hand and NOTHING else.
So, let’s recap. Texting is ruining American literacy at an exponetial rate and causing people to get more and more stupid because they can’t speak or spell. Is this how we want the world to look at us?
idk
