Functional Illiterates?

The other day I read an article in the Washington Post on the issue of the ever-increasing public expense. A Republican-minded citizen complained in a letter to the editor: Not just the armed forces, every Federal agency and appropriation is handled in this way. Even schools. They can whine and complain all they want about "cuts," but school budgets increase every year, and they turn out functional illiterates. We are a land where failure is richly rewarded, and productivity is criminally penalized. Is it no wonder that we're in a fix we're in?

Far from judging the issue of public spending in the States and the resulting consequences, the last part about schools producing functional illiterates electrified me.

Sprachkompetenz? (©yirsh)

In Germany, we are not better off. The magic word here is mangelnde Sprachkompetenz (insufficient command of spoken and written German). The young generation clearly lacks competence in two of the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). 

So school bashing is typical but aren't we beating the wrong donkey? I see kids, including my oldest grandson, spending time with audiovisual gadgets instead of books. As we say: Von nichts kommt nichts (Nothing will come out of nothing).

In the long run, the saddest aspect of this development is the loss of Sprachreichtum. Who can express his ideas clearly and with the subtlety of a rich vocabulary? Even more so, who will understand all those funny words and expressions grandparents still use in future years?

Old man = pessimist? Perhaps, but this topic unsettles me and is always on my mind.

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