Is the US in Collapse?: Education

The other day I was reading an article from a publication that is probably read by mostly educated people when I came across this phrase: “a temperatures.”

Wait, what?

For years prior to this, I’ve seen plenty of egregious headlines on The Blaze. I’m not sure how many of those headlines made it past an editor (if they have one). They were famous for their terrible grammar. But it really surprised me that anybody who was qualified to write for a national publication would even think “a temperatures,” let alone write it down or have it pass the scrutiny of an editor.

Then of course, there is a plethora of examples of people on Facebook with horrific grammar. People that talk about “loosing” weight (what, are they standing on a balcony and tossing it to the crowds below like it’s confetti?) or typing something like “don’t small china Prepare for War Ameeica.” No offense to the person that wrote that, but what does that mean anyway?

I get it that some people speak English as a second language. Or that different dialects exist. But some people’s writing is downright horrendous. And it’s too many to just put down as “English as a second language.”

I’m not sure things are going to get much better. When my husband sends me a text asking a question, AI offers “helpful” answers where I just have to click and it will respond to him. They’re almost always in some horrific voice that doesn’t resemble how I speak in any way, shape or form, and is more of an annoyance to me than a help. But I can see how some people might want to use it to save themselves a few seconds (and maybe it would resemble what they would have said if they would have thought up the words for themselves after all).

People’s education declined in the later years of Ancient Rome. While Rome is remembered for some of their great orators like Cicero, Cato, or even Marcus Aurelius, the later Roman Empire was plagued with people who lacked original thought. In those latter years, the height of civility was considered to be “doing well what has been done before.” (1). In other words, doing what was expected. Those that lacked original thought and followed the norms would receive the highest admiration of their peers.

They were a world in chaos. “A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries maintained.” (2). When you’re more worried about the chaos around you or how you’re going to feed your family, you don’t have as much time for books or learning.

Perhaps that’s what we’re going through today. A lot of people are distracted by all the chaos swirling around us. Perhaps they’re directly affected by it, or they’re bothered by what they’re seeing on the news. Perhaps they’re working overtime and see more joy in Netflix when they finally get some time to themselves than in reading a book or studying something.

Then there’s also the aftereffects of the pandemic. Today I was watching an agent call with my writing group, and the agent (Jim McCarthy) said that due to the pandemic, there’s a higher demand for shorter YA and Middle Grade books. Which is good for me, because the book I’m about to query is about 77,000 words, and the book I’m editing will probably also be in the mid 70K range; although I could probably make them longer, they feel right in that word count range, at least for now. Children who had their educations disrupted during the pandemic are having a hard time recovering. Prior to this, the trend was for books to get longer.

I’m currently reading Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp, and it is very interesting. It leaves a lot to think about, including is collapse a bad thing? I think maybe it just is, with its good and bad points. In the book, he states that almost nobody realizes that they’re in a collapse while it’s going on. Perhaps.

I think there’s other signs that we might be in a state of collapse, but I probably should write about it at another time.

(1) Thomas Cahill. How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. February 1, 1996. Audiobook edition. Approximately minute 44.

(2) Ibid. Approximately 1 hour 12 minutes into the audiobook.