Hi,
For what it's worth, I don't think "English" has been taught in close to forever in my part of the world.
I had a fun project last summer, proof reading papers for a couple of friends. One's an undergrad, working on her BA in English, and a teaching credential to go along with it. The other was finishing up her doctorate, to top off a BA in English and two Masters degrees. Today she's in admin, but she spent a number of years in the classroom, teaching English, sometimes to native speakers, other times to "English learners" (ELs) as apparently it's now fashionable to call what we used to call ESL students--English as a second language.
When I got started, I asked each one how much red ink they wanted to see on the draft copies (I won't proof read on screen--like many of us who are "my age" I find it too easy to miss errors on the screen which will just fly in your face off a piece of paper.) They both said "tear it apart!"
I started with one red pen. I now have a few remains of a 12 pack in the drawer... and I believe I did no harm as they reported back with glowing reports on their various papers.
Both of these ladies are quite intelligent, native English speakers, can carry on a pretty good conversation (if one doesn't mind a few too many "likes" floating about among the other words), but heavens, can they butcher up the language when they try to put in into print! I can't hold typos against them, because, as this thread demonstrates, nobody's immune from making them. But grammar, sentence structure, "READABILITY": the errors I picked out were amazing! One day I was in the library; not working on "my" students' work, but there was a lady about my age sitting close enough to hear the entire conversation. She was working with another undergrad student from the same university, and the conversation went something like this: "You (to the student) have a lot of good ideas, and it appears you have a very good vocabulary." Then she took her red pen and put a big red "x" across the first page (another "doesn't work on screen person".) "But SOMEBODY is going to have to READ this paper. So take it home, and rework it. Keep your ideas, use your big words, but make it READABLE." I resisted the urge, but wanted so much to go talk to her and tell her "Thank you" for telling her student something the young lady had probably never been told.
One of the biggest problems I see contributing to this "deteriation" (sorry, Bob, that one's gonna take some time to shake off!) is the lack of "drill and kill" in our education system these days. "Learning should be fun" and similar chants I've heard make it seem a terrible thing to make kids do the same things over and over--unless they're in sports where they call it "practice." How many of you remember going thru the alphabet time after time, a building block for learning to read phonetically (which worked for centuries), or spelling words, complete with informal classroom spelling bees? Or, heaven forbid, diagramming sentences?
"Just between you and I" that last one will draw empty looks from English teacher after English teacher around here. But it was probably the most important building block in learning to use and write the language I can remember, and would knock this ubiquitous yet still improper use of personal pronouns right in the dirt. For giggles, I asked a friend if they ever diagrammed sentences in school. I went to a Catholic high school for a couple of years, Latin included, and she went to the public high school right across the street, a couple of years before me. "Oh, yes, I remember diagramming sentences! We did it in high school, in LATIN!" I did it mostly in 7th grade, in English. And just when we thought we had it nailed, dear ol ' Mrs. Morse would pull a couple of sentences out of Shakespeare to throw us off! When it came to "following the rules" as we learned them, even the Bard himself butchered the language pretty well! I think she was trying to teach us that just about every "rock solid" rule in English has at least one exception. So the problem's been around for a while!
Rick C
