Just a little thought about literacy

An acquaintance put a post on her Facebook today encouraging teachers to "fight the good fight."  By that she meant to keep fighting for literacy.  She included a link to a Mississippi newspaper article talking about a literacy program that had helped literacy test scores in that state.

I'm all for literacy, but my definition of that term is very different from anything that would show up on a test score.  The acquaintance went on to say that she knew that cursive writing, sentence structure, and diagramming "had gone by the wayside."   It's good she noticed that they've been gone for a while now.

Newsflash!  Those three things are not returning.  They're gone into infinity.  Fight that fight all you want to.  Literacy has changed direction and meaning.  It's just one more sign for those who want to remain in denial that even the die-hards like my acquaintance are noticing that reading and writing are about to hit a hiatus.  I'm serious.  They will be pretty much gone by the end of 2017.

The commercial on the radio today pretty much sums up where young people's heads are these days.  There's a new app out for your phone.  It connects everything you do on your phone to a screen in your car so that you can do everything "hands-free".  Texting is done by voice command.  Touching icons for app activation is a thing of the past. Icons are voice activated too.  Search is by voice command.  Call directory is by voice command.  And more.  All via bluetooth to a screen in your car.

Yep.  Writing is pretty much out the window, down the toilet, and otherwise gone with the wind with this new app.  Mississippi better start preparing students in a different way or it will really be a sinkhole of a state to grow up in.  That would be true for any state that tests reading and writing literacy skills.  I'm thinking that video and voice presentation has more than adequately shown it is the new literacy.  It's past time to swallow that pill.