Romeo, I <3 U

Ann sent me an excellently written paper about instant messaging as a new literacy. Throughout my research and discussions with my classmates, Laine, Ann, and Crystal, I have come to understand that instant messaging and text messages are not the end of the English language as we know it. It is simply a new way to communicate, one that our students have far more access to than they do more classical forms of the language.

David Craig, who wrote the paper, says “the United States is not teaching as much English as it used to.” According to statistics from the College Board Craig references in the paper, “enrollment in English composition and grammar classes has decreased in the last decade by 14%.” That number does not seem like much until one stops to consider the comparable exponential increase in cell phone and instant message use in that same time period. Between 2004 and 2005 alone, IM use was up 19 percent. That’s fairly staggering, considering how prevalent IM was prior to 2004. In terms of sheer volume, Shakespeare doesn’t stand a chance.

Unless we put as much emphasis on reading and writing as there naturally is on math, when students write formally they will, as Craig asserts, revert to the forms with which they are most familiar. In this case, that form is the shortened form common in IM and text-message writing. There are no differing literacies in the mathematical world. 2 x 2 is the same in any part of the world, and students learn this language beginning in kindergarten. The linear nature of math makes it inherently less challenging for most to learn than language and all of its intricacies and variety of forms. Couple this with the ubiquity of math versus that of classical forms of English language and writing, and it is very easy to understand why math scores on standardized exams have increased while language scores on standardized exams have gone down.

So what are teachers to do? For one thing, English teachers alone should not be forced to take on the task of working various forms and modes of language into their curriculum. Rather than maintaining the traditional teaching of social studies – that being asking students to read from a textbook and regurgitate the information come test-time – teachers in this field should consider incorporating primary source materials to teach their students. Most of the best orators and rhetoricians have had major impacts on the shaping of our world’s history. Why not allow students to read the works of Churchill, Lincoln, Kennedy, Marx and others? This would not only allow students to more concretely shape their perspectives on history, it would give them access to language being used in ways that most English teachers do not have time to cover.

Craig is correct in saying the English language is not “under attack” as many English teachers (like me a few short weeks ago) believe. However, as educators we must understand that we owe it to our students to engage them in ways that maintains the knowledge and thoughts of the past as a part of the conversation of the present.