Poor MEA scores point to bigger issue

Not long ago, we read that Maine students had improved their scores significantly when it came to writing. In particular, the news story said there was a smaller percentage of students writing at the lowest performance level, called “does not meet standards.” At the same time, there was a general rise in the percentage of students scoring within the other three performance levels: “partially meets standards,” “meets standards” and “exceeds standards.”

That’s how they talk – and write – in the state Education Department when putting out press releases on the annual Maine Educational Assessment. A bit obtuse, some might say, but encouraging nonetheless. Fewer at the bottom of the barrel appear to be good news.

Actually, what the test results showed was that a vast majority of Maine students scored within the “partially meets standards” category for writing. That is not heartening, no matter what spin Augusta educators try to put on it.

And, it is increasingly apparent that others of us – in the workplace rather than in the classrooms – fall into substandard zones due to the carelessness with which we use our English language. Few of us today write or speak well. This is evidenced by the plethora of grammar and spelling errors we see in print every day and by the gaffes blatted over radio and television airwaves.

Columnist James J. Kilpatrick has written countless words on the pathetic state of reading and writing, especially among high school graduates. He blames television, for one, and also notes the changing methods of teaching. In his day, students learned English in the same way that golfers practiced putting and pianists ran their scales: “We worked at it,” he said. “We had spelling bees. We had homework every night. … We wrote themes and plays and book reviews and verse.” The key disciplines Kilpatrick saw fade from the educational picture were two years of Latin and diagramming sentences, requirements that were the raw material of any writer’s life.

John Updike set his own tough standard for writers: It is “to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.”

We probably won’t see that standard in business letters or media messages, but we must guard against drowning in the rising tide of mediocrity. Grammar and syntax do indeed matter. Punctuation matters. As Kilpatrick wrote in “The Writer’s Art,” “If punctuation did not matter, as Wilson Follett has observed, we would be hard put to distinguish between a pretty tall woman and a pretty, tall woman.”

It all matters. Every single verb, comma, phrase. This newspaper has received several letters to the editor in recent weeks, decrying the misuse and abuse of the language by the very ones who use words as tools in their profession, the media.

The letters reminded me of another – stinging – indictment. Richard Mitchell, English professor at Glassboro State College in New Jersey, wrote “The Graves of Academe,” in which he opined that some teachers of English who are charged with teaching potential teachers of English are themselves an illiterate bunch.

Perhaps the teachers are guilty. But the media – supposedly the masters of their art – are the most offensive. Shame on us all.