My paternal grandfather never got past the eighth grade, his services needed to help support his family by going to work. Not unusual for the time in which he was in the eighth grade, circa 1920. He saved his passing out examination which he passed. I looked at it one time, and it struck me to be of the calibre of a college entrance examination in the 1970s. Education no longer is what it once was, proof that devolution when it comes to modern man is in full swing.
Galloping Illiteracy
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
My Dad was born in 1918 and also only went through the eighth grade of school, yet was more knowledgeable than most Millennials are today.
When I was working at a commercial nuclear power plant in upstate NY, as training instructor, I would teach courses on basic science and algebra to new employees.
Most employees at my current job – Neutrons’R Us – do not know how to properly write. Thus, the plans and procedures which they do write are full of grammatical errors and formatting issues, and often I must re-write them so that what is on the printed page makes sense and is consistent.
In my morning status reports at Neutrons’R Us, I usually include a short Stoic proverb from Romans and Greek philosophers as a positive boost for the day. Recipients often ask the meaning because they have no knowledge of history or language to understand the proverb, and then, background must be laboriously explained because their paradigm is hopelessly modernized into idiocy. I have nothing in common with such people except employment (and that, by the way, is one of the reasons – besides financial corruption – why construction of the new VC Summer pressurized water reactors down here in South Carolina failed). America cannot do anything great anymore (e.g., the Boeing “Starliner” space capsule stuck at the International Space Station, and the Artemis moon project years behind schedule and over budget).
Now there is a happy exception. Navy nuclear personnel coming into the company as new employees are not like that because on a submarine at a depth of 800 feet, knowing the math and the procedure is required. However, there is no hope for arrogant college graduates enamored with LGBTQ DEI ideology. Graduates from American academic institutions are emasculated into mental weakness and have – to borrow a phrase from the now publicly absent Father Corapi – been done educated into imbecility. There are no critical thinking skills, and no mentally retained facts to support the working of such skills – just liberal progressive ideology.
Folks, this list appears to be from 50 years ago. (1972)
You’re not even going to get 100% on “ship” anymore due to “immigration without assimilation.”
Send me the current list… and a stiff drink!
One jaw-dropping sign of the vertiginous descent of education in the U.S.: I once found an “Allen and Greenough’s” Latin Grammar with the public school stamp on the back cover. It was used for high school Latin class in the public schools of Oklahoma, back around 1915-1920.
The public universities of that same state (about 60 years later) did not even contemplate using the excruciatingly detailed and technical Allen & Greenough Latin reference book.
College isn’t what high school was anymore.
My grandmother (born 1898, died 1990) attended public schools in Gary, Indiana from about 1907 to 1916. When I was a kid (1970s) she still had copies of her fifth grade reader and a high school Latin (yes, LATIN was being taught in public schools back then!) textbook titled “Bellum Helveticum” (The Helvetian Wars).
The fifth grade reader had excerpts from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, and numerous poems and essays from authors like Donne, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Whitman, etc. It had Daniel Webster’s “Replay to Hayne” (“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”) and Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”, which my grandma could still read aloud, and dramatically, from memory 60+ years later. Many of the works in that book didn’t appear in my curriculum until at least high school or college.
The old teacher agrees with part of this, but would caution that a majority of Americans did not complete high school until 1930, and many reached 13 without ever seeing a test like the one above, and went on to reasonably productive lives in the society of their time. I can see that standards have fallen by comparing old science textbooks from the 1930s and the 2000s, but part of it was an attempt (wrong-headed, if well-intentioned) to reach and interest kids who would have passed on the older programs. Modern schools “try” to teach everybody and the programs can’t be easily compared to the successes of older schools that plainly didn’t, even if some of us (like me) think the older elitism had a point.
@Elaine, I took 4 years of Latin in high school during the 1970s. Interesting anecdote about ignorance and illiteracy.
Neighbor across the street is an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at the local liberal progressive Catholic parish (yes, there’s a conservative Republican one – all the liberals go to the first, and the conservatives to the second; the priests are very different, but I digress). This neighbor saw a Chi Rho flag flying at my front porch. He asked what the “X” and “P” signified, and what the funny horseshoe opposite the “A” meant. I asked him if he had ever looked at the altar at his parish where those symbols were displayed. Then I explained Chi and Rho are the first two letters in χριστός which means Christ, and I explained the Alpha and Omega from Revelation 1:8. He had no idea where to find that in the Bible. But he knows all about social justice, climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion. He’s got a “COEXIST” bumper sticker on his vehicle with the usual symbols from Islam, Yin & Yang, etc.
My stepdaughter – God bless her heart – is a nurse with intimate knowledge of diabetes and its treatment. She had prepared a spaghetti dinner with sugar in it (that’s the Filipino style) for the family, and gave me a plate, knowing that I am diabetic and am maintaining a rigorous exercise and diet regimen to control blood sugar between 80 and 120 mg/dl. Yes, I rejected the plate. She was unable to apply her medical knowledge outside her place of employment. On a separate note, she one time heard me finish a prayer with the phrase: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.” Sometimes I lapse into the Elizabethan language of the Douay-Rheims / King James Version. She asked me what the Holy Ghost is. She too is Catholic.
I could go on and on and on. This abysmal ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills will damn our civilization.
I’m going to amend my contribution with a bit of optimism:
As a kind of surfer of YouTube, I have found several “channels” (i.e., the video output of individuals or groups of same) with a detailed, accurate recounting of history, even obscure European history of the 15th century (neglected for the longest time by so many!). Likewise, there are channels with detailed maps and diagrams of once-famous wars (Seven Years’ War, Austrian Succession, to name two). Do some of these Gen-Z’ers mispronounce proper names? Yes, left and right, all day long. Do they not know how to conjugate verbs? Apparently not, since I hear “they had went” or “she had knew” and similar illiterate mistakes. But there is a real thirst for real knowledge, without a doubt. I have hope!
“Graduates from American academic institutions are emasculated into mental weakness…” and that’s just the men.
Particularly with modern technology, the meaning of these words can be looked up in seconds. If I’m not sure what a word means, I’ll look it up. Even then, I can figure it out by the context within which it was used.
I have my criticisms of the Detroit Public School system, but I think the education I got in elementary school was as good as one could get in the 1970s. The teachers were old school and they hammered the basics into us. They also let us know THEY not US were in charge. You misbehaved, you got your ass beat. It was that simple.
I remember a quiz we got in science class. One of the questions was what is the purpose of a thermometer. We all said it tells you the temperature. The teacher marked it wrong. He said inanimate objects do not talk. He said it SHOWS you the temperature. I think I was in the fourth grade at the time. It may seem petty on his part, but I actually think it was brilliant. He was trying to teach thinking critically in a way kids that age can understand. And if there’s one thing the education system lacks today is critical thinking.
Another thing was if you asked if you could go to the bathroom, he would always say no, because there are no baths in the school. You had to say lavatory. You definitely didn’t say John because that was his first name.
Lucius –
Bro, you can’t even spell “luscious” right, so I don’t know why you’re bragging.
And now I’m going to be laughing all day at the idea of someone posting with the name “Luscious Quinctius Cincinnatus”.
More earnestly: I sometimes pray to the Holy “Ghost” rather than “Spirit”, probably more often than I realize. Anyone else?
AI and ChatGPT will make literacy decline even further than it has. As has Spellcheck and similar tools imbedded into software programs which all children rely on to complete assessments. They do the thinking for them. Mix this with social media and the pop cultural driven short hand with which children type and you are bound to get stupid kids. When you rely on technology to think for you why bother thinking. Being mentally lazy is just as harmful as being physically lazy. Probably more so.
The words ghost and spirit mean essentially the same thing. Holy Ghost Holy Spirit, tomato tomahto.
Greg-
Spirit and Ghost do generally mean the same thing.
What I find disturbing is a trend to omit the Holy part and just say “the Spirit”. As Catholics should very well know, there are many spirits out there – whole legions of them.
One must always be careful the company he keeps.
Saying “the Spirit” in a colloquial way with the assumption the hearer understands what is meant is not all that much of an issue. But if it’s in a formal liturgical context, it’s a problem, much like the ICEL translation leaving out the Holy in “for our good and for all of His Holy Church.” Benedict XVI, to his credit, corrected that.
You know, a few of these comments have me scratching my head a little. I can readily make sense of the original posting vocab. …and in a backhanded, sense, …that’s the problem.
I graduated from a college-prep high school. I did not consider how my education differed from that of contemporaries. It did not occur to me til much later how… in some respects, I should’ve sought a different sort of school. I looked at cost more than anything, and it cost me in a few ways. ..Though in truth, that might be precisely what the Almighty intended. … One great hazard of having acquired knowledge is… you expect others to have the same knowledge. I did not encounter another student whom I genuinely respected for HIS knowledge until my fourth year (of 5) of college. I recall we sometimes marveled at the lack of depth of knowledge which even a public university professed. I thus likely incidentally killed off many possible friendships, mostly failing to understand how knowledge can be… arrogant. I must admit I wasn’t very patient or forgiving(?) in my teens and 20s. .
Mr. Byrne is, sadly, quite correct about public school efforts; the DO make effort to reach everyone. Sometimes that’s the problem. These past 3-4 decades, a vocab list such as what we have here has been seen as “old-fashioned” or “ignorant”. It doesn’t adequately present “ethnic identity” of minorities, therefore it must be discarded and replaced. We therefore see Orwell’s Thought Police and language guardians exercise influence in education. …Ironically, thus enhances gaps of knowledge. Parents and students refuse to surrender the marvels of more “involved” language and knowledge; other parents and students reject such as “rubbish” (to state it politely). And nary the twain shall meet.
Pinky, I’m a tad surprised by your comment. I can’t tell if you’re joking? Given how popular Harry Potter has been, I would have thought “Lucius” would be a well-understood name, while “luscious” would be a worthy description of the taste of food or something equally delightful.
Greg, I have heard “ghost” and “spirit” mean the same or different things. “Ghost” usually refers to a person, a departed soul, yet who haunts either a location or a person. “Spirit” may refer to something ghost-like yet almost as often refers to something flowing, like a river or wind.
Holy Ghost might have come from need to depict the third of the Trinity as a person, much like God or Christ. Not an undefined, nebulous force. Holy Spirit might have come need to depict how the tongues of fire from Pentecost could occur without a physical person casting them.
I was joking about Lucius. Maybe I should have added that he spells Cincinnati wrong?
As for the terminology for the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, I don’t have a theological issue with it; it’s just one of those things that interests me.
“Maybe I should have added that he spells Cincinnati wrong?”
Heh. Reminds me of when my father and I “debated” whether we ought use Latin or vernacular for Mass. I had commented on Latin being universal, he commented it was universally unknown. He further considered how Latin was not always the same. Seems that when he was a boy, people argued over Cicero being “Sissero” or “Chichero”, depending on Classical vs Ecclesial Latin.
As far as Cincinnati being wrong… reminds me of trouble with “celtic”. Boston and LA were a big deal in the 80s, so I learned to say “seltik”. Imagine my surprise at learning the historic people were “keltik”. ..I guess we can thank some of my Irish ancestors for “Americanizing” the name.
@Pinky – I love your response –> Lucius versus Luscious.
PS, in classical Latin, “Lucius” is pronounced as “Lukius.”
I served in the Army when there was still a draft. Many of us who went to Catholic school and better public schools and scored well on the Army’s GT test were shunted off to clerical training and subsequent assignments. In retrospect, I suppose it did keep some of us from combat assignments.
“In retrospect, I suppose it did keep some of us from combat assignments.”
There’s a snip from Blackhawk Down wherein a soldier has clerical duties due to “special skills” he has. …He can type.
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