The Severely Limited Vocabulary of the Current Generation

[RonaldReagansGhost666]

Are their parents mumbling idiots without the ability to string together coherent sentences?

School education does squat when the home life actively encourages not speaking fluently.

It (sadly) seems that in this day and age, public schools must provide the role of parents as opposed to those who should. Many of the behavior problems that school administrators must be burdened with could be solved simply through corporal punishment.

[thesummerqueen]

...

Yeah, you're 14 and you think beating people is the right solution?

I'm into BDSM and I don't even advocate that sort of shit.

---

Public schools are the only safe haven for some people, and the only place some children get a decent meal. They are the only mode of elevation for people of limited means - education is one place where children can excel based on their own efforts, gaining scholarships if they apply themselves. While I think our education system needs a massive overhaul, you are looking at stereotypes instead of the root causes of the problem.

1) We used to hold education in a much higher regard. While there was always a sort of snide attitude towards the perceived snobbery of educated classes, because education cost money, and because it wasn't as widespread as it is today, it was still held with a certain amount of respect. Today, the media trend is two-fold: we hold the nerds in high regard (seriously - Avengers had two science-minded men trying to help save the world, Big Bang Theory, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the calling out of bullies who prey upon the nerds, etc), but we also have a rather vocal and idiotic portion of the country claiming that education is for elitists.

2) In order to get money from the government, schools are forced to play by the government's rules. Unfortunately, we have had some idiotic management. Standardized testing - and the granting of money based on those scores - has turned curriculums into prisons for teachers in which they must teach kids how to take multiple choice tests and for the most part only the material on those tests. It's bullshit. It leads to cheating if the teachers can't get the kids to pass with high enough grades. It leads to boring fact recitation instead of true understanding.

3) Many teachers lack the ability to make stories relevant to children of today. We're told certain novels and works of literature are valuable and important, but even my IB level teachers were pretty bad at explaining why. One of the better exercises we did was to act out certain material as if it were modern times. Did you know that the movies Bridget Jones and Clueless were retellings of Jane Austen? O Brother Where Art Thou was a retelling of The Odyssey? We put Shakespeare into a modern context in order to show how these themes are human themes and that's why it's important. With a little historical insight, and a connection to the humanity of the text, the whole world of literature opens. But teachers... a lot of them sort of suck at this.

There's no reason to say that Harry Potter shouldn't be used. The books are a delving into the Hero's Journey - they are the hero adventure of that generation... just like Star Wars was for our parents. They're actually quite brilliant - and rather secular, if you haven't noticed. The language may not be as old-fashioned as people want for their own ideas of what makes a legitimate course, but I have a friend - the defunct member "The Winter Prince" - who teaches english courses at college that include X-Men comics. It's about connecting to other people through their themes and conflicts, and exploring morality through the author's eyes. Not about knowing the most words. That said, you will learn more words if you read a wide amount of material.

To the point someone else made, it's true it isn't always about knowing all the words, but putting them together correctly in a simple fashion. Neil Gaiman is ace at this, I think. His prose is deceptively simple...and smooth as good scotch. Getting to this level requires practice, though, and how many of us need that? We merely need to know how to communicate effectively at work and home, and that doesn't require a stunning vocabulary.

What you also don't know is that some problems occur like this: in the black community, children and adults can be teased or scolded for speaking 'higher' than their perceived station. They don't sound "black enough" if they use proper grammar and vocabulary. True story.

Behavior problems don't need to be tended to by the school. The school is there to teach - not to parent. Corporal punishment should only exist where safe words are involved.

[Rayaan]

Your understanding is though Rayaan. The more words you know the greater your understanding will be.

You're right. I didn't think about that. Knowing a greater number of words will certainly improve your level of comprehension/understanding.

Sometimes I go to a dictionary to find synonyms for a word just to use a different word than the one that I'm thinking of.

I wish I knew more words.

[Jackalope]

Meanwhile, when I first met online a man I dated off and on for some years, he was surprised I was 14 years younger than him - he said I wrote much older than I was. I think it's the nature of every generation to assume that their vocabulary is wider than the next.

That might have included things other than vocabulary. I was shocked to discover how young Cthulhu Dreaming is. I expected someone considerably older.

Eh? Shit, I've got one foot in the grave.

[Tempus]

When communicating solely through text, a greater vocabulary, to me, can be analogous to using different tones of voice during speech. It can allow for a nuance in expression that, while not exclusive to choice in diction, is nonetheless nice to have. Also, having a large pool of words to draw on can enable more economical writing - provided your audience understands what the hell you're saying. As apophenia said, you can find yourself needing to learn how to make do with less if your audience isn't familiar with the words you're using. I will admit some minor frustration in having to use a sentence where a single word could suffice or having to forgo precision in favour of a simpler, but more vague word choice. I guess at the end of the day I still have control over my bowels, so I can't complain.

• *Tempus is hyper-conscious of misspelling, misgrammaring, or otherwise fucking up his post but is too sleep deprived to be able to reliably assess his own post.

Actually, I've decided my post isn't quite over yet, so sit back down. A large vocabulary, as I've already said, is good for expression. But, again as already said, it isn't necessary for it. In a work like a novel, themes, symbols, form, repetition, juxtaposition, and so on, can all be used to express complex things succinctly and / or uniquely. The green light at the dock in The Great Gatsby comes to mind. That was a symbol which carried greater meaning without the need for fancy expressive words. Then again, all words are symbols, I guess. So maybe symbols. Yeah. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. If I stop writing I'm going to have to confront the fact that it's 5am and I don't know whether I can deal with that right now. You know, I recently learned how to correctly use "have" and "has". I was writing and then bam, suddenly something didn't sound right. "'Have' or 'has'?", I asked myself. Chocolate or vanilla? To be or not be? You've probably just realised I'm wasting your time. But I'm not going to stop here, oh no. I'll just keep rambling on, like some tolling bell of doom, tolling until your final days, tolling every time it gets to the good part in that song you like, tolling like some unholy metronome, tolling like that shrill triangle you played in music class at school because all the good instruments were taken, tolling like that awful seat belt warning in new cars that tries to preserve the lives of careless people, tolling like some anvil of a forgotten age, tolling like that microwave of yours commanding you to bath your meagre frozen dinner in its non-ionising radiation, tolling like that anticipatory trill after dialling a telephone number you'd really prefer not to dial, tolling - oh my, how I'll fucking toll my ass off.

[RonaldReagansGhost666]

...

Yeah, you're 14 and you think beating people is the right solution?

I'm into BDSM and I don't even advocate that sort of shit.

This is all theoretcial speak, but fear of such punshments should dissuade students from misbehaving.

[Tempus]

*Whooooosh*

[thesummerqueen]

3PO, I don't think you understand corporal punishment or psychology.

[KichigaiNeko]

Your understanding is though Rayaan. The more words you know the greater your understanding will be.

You're right. I didn't think about that. Knowing a greater number of words will certainly improve your level of comprehension/understanding.

Sometimes I go to a dictionary to find synonyms for a word just to use a different word than the one that I'm thinking of.

I wish I knew more words.

Same here Rayaan. Just tried to find an alternative for sigh from the online thesaurus and chrome just crashed!

I miss my thesaurus (dead tree form)