I’M GETTING REALLY ANGRY!
My impatience is showing – and I’m not happy about it.
I cannot contain my irritation that while I was sitting around doing next to nothing – a whole generation had grown up around me – a generation of test-messagers, a generation who stand in line at midnight to buy the new I-Phone so they can be part of “where it’s at!” Hurrah!! \
But I accept it all, understanding that what I feel is part legitimate disdain, but a larger part jealousy. Yes, I am impatient with them because I can’t be impatient with myself. But let me leave all that psychobabble of projection to other armchair would-be shrinks.
I surrender. I accept your right to spend your money foolishly. I accept that you have to create a culture that is yours – not one that is mine, old, dusty and irrelevant.
What I can not tolerate is that you have become part of a dumbed-down generation, dependent on television, not only for your view of the world, but of the priorities and obligations that are part of our lives.
To wit: a few days ago, watching CBC TV news (remembering with regret that once that august organization was a shining light of enlightenment – and if not enlightenment – at least a certain standard of excellence when it came to the English language.
No longer.
We are all, including the young commentators, newspeople, announces, and talk-show hosts, the victims of education via American television.
Why else would I hear this young woman, speaking on the CBC, abandon the once-cherished Canadian (and English) linguistic tradition of how to pronounce the article “the” when it preceded a noun with a vowel. .Remember, we would say “thee edge.”
On CBC she said, having heard it on U.S. TV which long ago abandoned correctness in favour of inner-city jargon. So it is now customary to say “thuh edge.”
My daughter-in-law, who is a school teacher said that some of her students were startled that she added an “n” to the article “a” so than she said “an edge” and not “a edge.” The kids were mystified.
The CBC woman further irritated my by referring to Ralph Klein as the former “pre-meer” of Alberta. In fact, the august (but not for long) CBC is full of promos announcing the “premeer” of new Fall programs Strictly an Americanism, based not on a legitimate reality, but on illiteracy and disregard for the beauties of Shakespeare’s English.
But the vocal critics of language misuse, of solecisms, of bad grammar, of comic-book based literary standards, insist that the language is a dynamic, growing,. Changing thing.
I agree. But change based on new realities is acceptable. Change based on giving dignity to illiteracy – is not.
But hell, when I was in public school our teachers insisted that we pronounce the word “clerk” as “clark.” I didn’t.
Yes Larry, every word you wrote is true and in spades. More's the pity. But it will not improve unless we return some basics to the school curriculum. Our youngsters today learn no grammar (how they are expected to learn a foreign language is beyond me), nor do they read literary classics in their readers. Consequently they have little or no exposure to English well used. Nor do they pick up good syntax and vocabulary by osmosis, more or less, because what they do read parellels the current culture, which originates with the lowest denominator of pop celebrity. It is a culture which celebrates Paris Hilton as an icon.
ReplyDeleteIt has been around long enough that those produced by the system are now holding jobs in the media--at newspapers and yes, even at the august CBC, where to be a newswriter, one had to have a degree and much experience. Last winter I heard a CBC newsreader proclaim that an elderly woman, struck by a hit and run driver, was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital, where she was treated with two broken legs. When I asked my university history classes what was wrong with that sentence, not one student could tell me. I had to explain that there is an enormous difference between with and for.
You are also right on when you comment on the dumbing down of the CBC and its new programs. I regret enormously the loss of the CBC as we knew it, and the demise of the programs which made Radio Two unique. I resent its replacement wth the "new" Radio Two which has eviscerated a unique asset. Radio Two showed us what our culture was and could be, as well as providing impetus in competitions and commissions, and in broadcasting the music from them, it tied our country together. It will be nothing more than a purveyor of the lowest denominator of American pop culture. It is visible already in the drivel, sans real thought, sans vocabulary, sans wit, sans professional delivery which already pervades the new programs. In so doing it has and will, undermine the autonomy and the intelligence of our public broadcaster. That infuriates me, because we pay for it in our taxes, and because the numbers-driven management did not bother to poll the audience to ask what they liked, didn't like, or would like to hear before slashing to the bone. But more than this, we will lose a unique collection of people who put Radio Two together. Their talents will be wasted on pop radio, and I expect that even if not actually let go as of 30 August, they will drift away for there will be no satisfaction, no real place for them at the CBC. What a pity.
This is but one manifestation of "dumbing down" or "bubblegumming" as one of my correspondents calls it--culture aimed at those who think Brittney Spears is a great artist. You will have noticed that "very" has been replaced by "way." Something of which the speaker approves is now "way cool, " and "of" is now a verb (they would of done something). Even James Michener, who is certainly old enough to know better, used it in his narrative, not dialogue in his opus on Poland.
It is occasionally funny, but in the long run, sadly funny, that lack of vocabulary produces such gems as these in this year's essays from students who are in anything from second to fourth year university:
Tsar Nicholas was an anchovy
War on land was a battle of nutrition between two opponents.
The Allies formed a collation.
Young Italy raised funds selling pizza
Am I a History Professor or running a cooking school?
And while I am at it, let us note that the students' idea of geography is at least as muddled as their English.
Mein Kampf was written while Hilter was in jail in Sydney Australia.
After battles the Brits were able to control most of the Nile river that streamed into India and neighboring countries.
Mousoliny was located on the outskirts of Italy near Sweden in case he need to escape.
The students' sense of values seems to have gone down hill also:
People looked to Hilter as a God because he provided them with the VW Beeatle.
Hilter and Gubbels were the Batman and Robin of Nazi Germany. (funny, I though they fought evil, not committed it).
But perhaps this one sums it all up:
The purpose of mass education is to literate the masses.
[Dr] Helen Hatton
Department of History
University of Toronto