Lack of education in adults.

Has anyone noticed the poor English that people speak?
I’m talking about adults who have ‘graduated’ from America’s high schools. It is illustrative of the poor education we are receiving or should I say the poor education we are leaving high school with. Blame rests on the shoulders of both educators and students.

I have been hearing poor English spoken for years and I finally just have to say something, it is getting worse.

I have several examples to illustrate my point: this sentence “Where you at?”.
Any sentence that ends with the word ‘at’ will make an English language teacher cringe.
For those of you who use this sentence let me inform you that the correct wording is “Where are you?” Doesn’t that sentence sound more intelligent? Doesn’t it paint a more favorable picture of that persons educational level? The person that says “Where you at” displays his/her education level somewhere around grade school level. To hear grown adults speak like this is just embarrassing.
It is not cool to use this language. It is not cool to dumb yourself down. Take some pride in your native language.

Here is another example to illustrate my point: using phrases such as ‘like’ and ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’.
As an example: “He was sort of walking down this road.” Think about how dumb that sounds. He was either walking down the road or he wasn’t. You cannot ‘sort of’ walk down a road. I don’t know, maybe he was crawling down the road, if so then say he was crawling down the road. If he was stumbling down the road then use the word stumbling. Being articulate paints a much clearer picture of what is happening. After all we speak in order to communicate ideas to each other. Don’t you want to communicate accurately? Don’t you think you have the ability?
This example also shows a lack of belief in what you say. Take a stand. When you express yourself by saying ‘sort of’ or ‘kind of’ you are putting forth the fact that you don’t truly believe in what you are saying. Show your intelligence by saying that he actually did walk down this road, don’t leave us wondering whether he did or not.
Take some pride in your intelligence and your native language? Does it no longer mean anything that we are intelligent human beings?
Next time you speak, make a conscious effort to leave out these phrases and see how people around you respond to you. You will be surprised how their view of you will change for the better. They will start to think of you as being intelligent. Which you are! You are choosing to ‘dumb yourself down’ by being inarticulate.

Another example is seen in the use of profanity as a language substitute. Using profanity only illustrates your lack of education and your lack of respect (for yourself and for others).

It especially bothers me when the news media use poor English. These people are paid to communicate using the English language. The least they could do is actually speak proper English.
They are continual examples of how to communicate ideas. They should realize that they illustrate, by example, how ideas are spread. If they use improper language then that improper language is accepted and will then perpetuate. If they use proper language then the use of proper language will spread.
It is not that they themselves are this ‘all-powerful’ and influential force that teaches people how to speak, but their example can go a long way.
When they speak poor English they illustrate that getting a good education doesn’t matter.

Everyone knows it is true that it is easy to spot an intelligent person, just listen to him/her speak. Do you not want to sound intelligent? Do you not want to use your intelligence to advance in whatever field you work in? We are all born with this intelligence, the ability to be intelligent. Why do we choose to suppress it?

Listen to a successful person speak, and I’m not gauging success by the amount of money someone has. Being financially wealthy does not in itself make someone successful.
Trust me, there are illiterates who have a lot of money. You only have to listen to sports people or entertainers speak in order to find some under-educated people. Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking all sports people and entertainers. But it seems to me that when some of these people speak our collective intelligence level drops another notch on the human evolutionary chain.
I hope everyone realizes that a lot of entertainers are told what to say and how to say it. It is only when they are one-on-one without cue cards that their true intelligence or lack there of comes out.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘brain over brawn’? An intelligent person will quickly rise above others in every situation.

You might think I am being overly critical of this subject. I believe that in order for America to gain a more respectful role in this world community we had better get our education level up. We are falling behind, regardless of what statistics say. Statistics can be made to say whatever we want them to. Speak to the everyday person on the street and it is appalling what they don’t know. Has anyone watched Jay Leno of the Tonight Show do his ‘Man on the Street’ routine? He asks college students questions concerning very basic high school level topics and current events. These college students should be ashamed of themselves concerning the answers they give, as well as the ‘educators’ that allowed these students to leave high school in this condition. As I watch this I see the majority of these ‘dumbed down’, under-educated students just laugh it off. Their response to being found out to not to be as intelligent as they would like people to think they are is to make a joke of it. Well, it is a joke. But they are the punch line.

Take a look at our president George W. Bush. There have been all sorts of jokes about how dumb this guy is. And he made it all the way to the presidents office! This is astounding! Do you think our reputation has been damaged by having this man as our president? Of course it has. World leaders laugh at him behind his back and it reflects poorly on the rest of us.

I have no answers that will correct this situation, at least nothing anyone wants to listen to. My ideas would require parents and children to change their behavior toward hard work, responsibility, respectability and the belief that it would all be worth it in the end. We have become a nation of sloppy, lazy, narcissistic, arrogant people who think that we have a God given right to be ourselves without any regard as to how other people view us.

If history recalls, every great civilization has reached this same point, and they no longer exist. The cycle will continue and at some point some other nation will unseat America. You can on it, unless we change our ways.