Posted on 04/04/2011 4:58:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
I’m getting to be a crabby old man and I’m not even fifty. But working at a liberal university for eighteen years has taught me never to accept responsibility for my actions or my disposition. Instead I blame my most recent bad mood (the one I’m in right now) on a student who just asked me a question about the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Leon, (1984). Wanting to know the holding, he asked if it meant “that the police can rely upon a search warrant they don’t reasonably no is invalid.” I almost told the student there was know way he was going to pass my course if he didn’t no the difference between “know” and “no.” But I just new I would get in trouble if I did.
Of course, when criticizing the low quality of students in higher education it’s important that we not pick on males only (that would be sexist). No discussion of the declining quality of student communication skills would be complete without talking about the role (or was that roll?) of female students. After all, they make up more than 50% of the student body on the average college campus. You are (like totally) aware of their presence when you hear a conversation like the following, which occurred last Tuesday right outside my opened office door:
“I’m just like not real sure what I want to do when I graduate? I like thought I would like major in business but there’s a lot of like math and stuff? Plus, the classes in sociology are like easier and like way more interesting? I just seriously like need to focus on like what I want to do when I get out and stuff?”
None of the young woman’s sentences were actually questions. But the inflections at the end of each sentence (along with the general lack of confidence in anything she said) made them sound like questions. I mean, it made them like sound like questions? I’m sure that that woman has a Facebook account with a “like like” button. So she can like seriously like. And stuff.
Of course, it is racist of me to have just given two examples of declining student quality using white students. Let’s (like totally) fix that by recounting a conversation I heard just this morning as I was walking up the stairwell in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Building, which is sure to be re-named Mike Adams Hall after I retire.
“You did dat. I did not do dat. Yo. Dats right. It’s yo fault. My situation? What about yo situation? I do dat. I do dat. But dats because you done did dat. Dats what I’m sayin’. Dat’s what I be sayin’.”
I have no idea what that young Hyphenated-American student was saying to his cell phone. All I know is that I have the song “Zip-a-dee-do-dat” stuck in my head. Thanks to the Diversity Office it’s the new “Song of the South”!
As much as I enjoy broaching these topics with humor the results aren’t funny when these students get out into the real world to compete in a full-time job applicant pool. So there has to be a serious discussion of how this problem became so pronounced and what can be done about it.
It would be tempting to blame these kinds of problems on the university English departments. After all, they rarely teach students English these days – opting instead to indoctrinate them into post-modern philosophy and radical feminist politics.
It would also be tempting to blame the Schools of Education that pay wacky professors like Maurice Martinez to teach “black English” to white students. Instead of asking the minority to conform to the majority they do the exact opposite – probably because it is more difficult and, hence, would require greater government intervention (read: greater federal grant opportunities).
But the problem is much broader than that. It is a problem stemming from our basic educational mission of promoting multiculturalism and diversity. In this age of diversity we are reticent to correct students for speaking in a “wrong” way or to reward them for speaking in a “right” way. To do either one of these things is to admit that there is a right or wrong way of doing things in any given cultural or social context. Professors who are unwilling to agree that English is the “right” language to speak in this country are hardly willing to assert that there is a right or wrong way to speak it.
President George W. Bush was considered an idiot by most college professors simply because he was inarticulate. One of my colleagues even circulated an email saying that Bush was responsible for the fact that most college students are inarticulate. But Bush is no longer in office and the problem keeps getting worse. Multiculturalism has come up short in our efforts to promote linguistic skill and social competency. It’s time for a new strategery. I think you gnome sayings. Gnome sayin’?
bttt
I’d like to think it means less competition for my kids, but as teens they are already frustrated with their peers and will not be happy having to work with the majority of them.
Sez here u talk like a fag and uh...ur shit's all retarded. 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now.
Like no shit!!!
On a more positive note, our quaint native patois will amuse our Chinese masters.
On a more positive note, our quaint native patois will amuse our Chinese masters.
-- snip --
A lot of kids don't bother learning proper spelling and grammer because if they do write, they automatically get corrections from word processing programs.
I have always had teachers who insisted on correct grammar and spelling. Also after summer vacation when you went to the next grade the teacher used to ask us what we did on our summer vacations and some said something like I and my friends, or I an my brother etc, the teacher corrected the student and said never say I first, the correct grammar is my friends and I, or my brother and I etc
yeah, he be gettin all up in my FACE n stuff....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4
Totally like whatever, you know?, by Taylor Mali
As much as I enjoy broaching these topics with humor the results aren’t funny when these students get out into the real world to compete in a full-time job applicant pool. So there has to be a serious discussion of how this problem became so pronounced and what can be done about it.
I dunno. Some do okay...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUS6nKpddec [Language warning]
It’s time for a new strategery. I think you gnome sayings. Gnome sayin’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonDPGwAyfQ [language]
Like, u no were I bee coming from man.
“Ken you feel me, professor?”
“no means know” ping
As bad as their language skills are, their ethical skills are worse.
Why not skip college altogether, save a quarter million and get an online degree that people will call meaningless because it only cost a few hundred dollars.
Meaningless is an improvement.
We don't need KNOW education
We don't need KNOW thought control
KNOW dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
***President George W. Bush was considered an idiot by most college professors simply because he was inarticulate.***
I’d forgive this professor for saying the above if it weren’t for the fact that he also said that he, himself, climbed the stairwell. He must be an amazing acrobat if he can climb up the housing of the stairs.
We pretty much got rid of high culture, though. Orchestral music? Opera? Even jazz is something for nerds now. Do people read poetry? Latin? Greek? Once upon a time, anyone aspiring to better themselves or to rise up in society tried to get an education in these areas. It made them think better. It made them speak better. It helped them understand "the long conversation" of culture which takes place over centuries of human striving.
I think the 1960s had a lot to do with this problem. All that fancy stuff -- getting dressed for dinner, nice manners, going to the symphony -- all of that was just bourgeois evidence of the stunted life of Americans living in the suburbs. Away with it! We don't need high culture!
Instead, we'll just, like, get funky wi' de homeboys and totally chill. Dat's what real peoples do. And stuff.
Very true.
My 14 year old niece does her state capital homework using Google.
The other day, I talked her into taking Spanish as an elective. Well, she’s so smart, she went on Google translator and asked me for different words.
“Cat”, I’d yell from the other room. She’d come back with-”cat!” “Mother”-she’d come back with mother etc.
After about ten words, I stroll into my office, and discovered she was clicking on the wrong ‘Listen’ button.
How could she think that all 10 words would be said the same way albeit a little strange due to lady computer voice-but really-talk about no common sense and lack of skills!
“Just Google it” is all she knows! And the teachers encourage it she tells me. The classes she can’t really Google/fake, she’s got 70’s in-it’s so frustrating to watch her fail in slow motion...
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