We all make careless mistakes when talking or writing, but I have been a high school teacher for twenty five years, and I have noticed a decline in overall verbal and mathematical skills for some time now. While I attribute some portion of this problem to society in general, I am in a unique position that allows me to see what others outside the field do not. The main problem, I think, is that basic skills are no longer emphasized.
For the past twenty or so years, politicians have been either directly or indirectly running our schools. They look at the students like products that can be improved by adding more and more things to the curriculum. They want fourth grade students to be able to write coherent essays and solve algebraic equations; and in their haste to “improve” education, they push teachers to neglect the basic skills that students need to function properly in order to teach these new “mandated” skills. The teacher’s answer to the problem is to give students calculators and word processors as soon as they are capable of using them to substitute for the basic skills that are no longer being emphasized. All of this, of course, has a snowball effect which compounds the problem as students progress through school.
The politicians’ answer to this mess is to “dumb down” state tests until they only test a small set of skills; much of which is not necessary to function in life or to progress to higher education. Has anyone been through a fast food drive through lately? What happens when you give the teenager at the window $10.25 for a meal that costs $5.23? I did this and it took five minutes and two managers to figure out the change.