Is Our Children Learning Enough Grammar to Get Hired?

Pendarvis Theory of Technology: "..., it is my theory that everything wrong with everything is the fault of language teachers.

"If a child is taught that it is all right if you mis-spell a word occasionally, or don't always punctuate exactly correctly, then you are teaching that child that small mistakes are okay, as long as people know pretty well what is meant. I feel this is a dangerous attitude to foster in a highly technological society."

from William Tuning's novel Fuzzy Bones

He goes on with an example that could have come from what I have read about one of the difficulties that contributed to the problems at Three-Mile Island; not paying enough attention to what the instruments were saying (as an example of inadequate attention to detail).

Steve Allen's Dumbth ( http://www.amazon.com/Dumbth-Thinking-Reason-Better-Improve/... ) discusses how things have broken down in general over decades; and it long pre-dates the texting and Twitter used as excuses for sloppy grammar several of the essays' writers fall back on.

I think that older generations are unaware the current generation's grammar skills are not particularly bad or good, just more likely to be explicitly tested. I know plenty of 30 and 40 year olds who write like crap, with horrible grammar.

Obviously one can make too much of bad grammar and spelling and misjudge an applicant, but there's another angle to this -- good grammar and spelling send a clear signal that the applicant probably reads a lot.

One cannot easily learn good English grammar and spelling by rote, because there are too many pitfalls and exceptions. My favorite example is "I before E except after C". It turns out that more words in a typical dictionary violate this rule than obey it. My next favorite example are those who, over the years, have written me to comment on my ... choose one ... Web site|sight|cite. (This specific example shows the risk of relying on audio media rather than print.)

I recently visited a bookstore and saw this poster: "The Tragedy of Illiteracy -- now available as an audiobook."

By reading, one grasps the subtleties of grammar and spelling through example. More reading, more lexical seasoning.

ok... I'm no grammar expert but isn't the article title using improper grammar? With children being a plural form of child I would have started that question with are not is. Is children... doesn't sound right not me. If you rearrange the words so it is a statement and not a question (Our Children Is Learning Enough Grammar to Get Hired.) using is sounds bad to me. Is it trying to be ironic?