I think there is some confusion here between the teaching and appreciation of the complexities of English and its (inevitable) evolution. Of course the language constantly evolves, picking up words all over the place – that is why English has more words than any other language and is so inconsistent in its pronunciation and spelling. This has very little to do with the proper understanding of the structure of English – its nouns, verbs, subjects, objects, predicates, gerunds, infinitives (split and otherwise)… and all those things that used to be taught to baby boomers at school. Knowing this stuff, and how to speak and write fluent, accurate and elegant English doesn’t mean we can’t communicate happily in jargon, slang or textish – it just equips us to operate using the full potential of our language when the occasion arises.

To have students presenting at university with inadequate literacy skills after 12 years at school is appalling. You have to wonder what value a university education actually has these days if they are prepared to offer places to the semi-literate.

Oh, for the Good Old Days when all the best people knew how to spel.

And new there grandma.

And everything was neat and tidy and the working class were kept in their place and out of universities.

Cheryl, why did you write "Comma's" with an apostrophe?

Are you suggesting that _I_ neglected to include an apostrophe?!?

**shudders**

I rest MY case.

The debate’s been pretty much covered but just a few points …

I’ve been a publishing editor for 20 years and am used to editing manuscripts written by authors from all age groups. Overall, I have noticed no difference whatever in the English standards of authors who went to school either pre- or post 80s.

Even so, any supposed lack of spelling and grammar skills is no big deal for aspiring writers and I don’t know why King is making such a big issue of it. Should they ever be published, King’s students will have moved through an established publishing process – from literary agents through to acquisition/sub-editors to copy editors – that will clean up any deficiencies in their grammar, syntax, expression etc. More often than not, professional literary agents and/or editors end up re-writing about 5-10 per cent of a published work.

(And, by the way, does anyone ever stop to consider that one reason why English standards may appear to have declined in recent decades is that the workplace impact of the desktop computer – which now requires everyone to do their own correspondence – has exposed a lot of poor English that used to be cleaned up by the humble but once ubiquitous stenographer!)

And on the subject of the supposed decline of English standards ... while many other languages are desperately trying to stay alive, English has the opposite problem of having become far too dominant for its own good. As the language of international business, politics and technology, English has to move with corresponding speed and intensity - which makes many of the established linguistic rules redundant. There is also a strong likelihood that English will buckle under inevitable global pressures from bi-lingual cultures and English-speaking sub-cultures to fragment it.

The struggle to keep old-curriculum English standards on life support is well meaning – often interesting – but increasingly irrelevant.

SJF-I appreciate your experience and comments. I have reviewed for scientific journals a good number of papers in the last 20 years as well as having had to deal with governmnetal bureaucratese. English is a language which is wonderfully flexible and is evolving continuously, and one in which it extremely easy to be thoroughly ambiguous to the point of total confusion whilst sounding as if one means something. My concerns, and those shared by some of my colleagues, is simply that the failure to properly teach English grammar leads to incompetent communication. I am not interested in maintaining life-support systems for curricula, but am concerned that in written communication succinctness and precision are often hard to find these days. Education Departments seem to be among the worst sinners in this respect.

I have noticed a radical departure in English comprehension in school kids from say the 70s to now. There are flaws in King's argument too but one thing that is astounding is the nit picking.

Frankgol made some good points and then spoilt it by his lack of understanding of learning cycles in childhood education or the reasons why there is a push for a national school curriculum. He rightly pointed out that the article was written from a vocationalist persepctive.

It would make good sense for Rudd to bring this on now as there is a clear majority (except for those still left of left and who are being left behind) of Australians who want a national curriculum, not only in English but across the board.